CHPC - Research Computing and Data Support for the University

Understanding Wind Energy

By Gerard Cortina and Marc Calaf

 Wind Energy & Turbulence, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah

The Wind Energy and Turbulence laboratory was designed to improve the current understanding of wind energy harvesting. To achieve this goal we dedicate much of our efforts to develop new knowledge on the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. Our focus resides on solving high resolution numerical simulations with the help of the Center for High Performance Computing at the University of Utah, which we ultimately complement with the analysis of experimental data.

Currently we mainly use Large Eddy Simulations, which are capable of resolving most of the atmospheric turbulent scales as well as the wind turbines, providing very good results when compared to the experimental data. We are highly interested in improving the current conception of the land-atmosphere energy exchanges, and our work strives to fill the gaps of our current understanding. It is only by properly capturing the land-atmosphere connection that forces the atmospheric flow aloft that we will be able to reproduce with high accuracy the atmospheric flow.

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