Research on Wake Characteristics of Wind Turbines in Mountainous Terrain

Abstract

For mountain‑complex terrain conditions, turbine wake velocity profiles are jointly modulated by topographic relief and incoming‑flow wind features, which breaks the uniform wake distribution pattern and imposes substantial impacts on the wind‑energy capture performance of downstream wind turbines. To reveal the wake evolution mechanism for wind farms located in mountainous zones, this paper adopts field LiDAR measurement datasets to quantify how terrain conditions and incoming‑flow properties govern wake development tendencies. The test results demonstrate that wind‑shear effects produce obvious asymmetry for wind‑speed fields within the wake region. Topographic undulations create successive elevation variations along the wake propagation path, which drives the downward offset of wake core; further, the downward‑offset magnitude of wake core presents an approximate linear correlation with local terrain elevation difference.