AbstractsComputer Science

Computation of near-field distribution around wind turbines

by Xiao Liu




Institution: University of Texas – Austin
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Degree: MSin Engineering
Year: 2014
Keywords: Wind turbines; Shadow region; Huygens principle; Parabolic equation
Record ID: 2042565
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/2152/26004


Abstract

In this work, two approaches for computing the near-field distribution around wind turbines are proposed, including: (1) Huygens Principle and (2) the parabolic equation technique. In order to simplify the problem, the cylinder model is utilized to represent the wind turbines and transform the problem into a two-dimensional case. To make Huygens Principle computationally tractable, several approximations are made based on the problem geometry especially modelling the cylinder as a plate. The expression of the electromagnetic field radiated by the equivalent magnetic current can be analytically solved by the error function. To verify the results, FEKO is utilized to simulate the scattering of infinitely long cylinders using periodic boundary condition (PBC). In order to solve the problem of multiple cylinders, a modified method is derived. For more accurate results, the parabolic equation (PE) technique is utilized to solve this problem, which is usually utilized to solve wave propagation problems. In this case, wide-angle approximation is used to solve the parabolic equation, which can obtain accurate results in a region of up to 45 degrees. Although these two approaches are not full-wave simulation, the calculation time is significantly reduced and the error is acceptable. To further verify the computed results by the parabolic equation technique, two commercial transceivers from Time Domain Corporation are used to measure the field distribution behind a finite-length metal pole. The frequency-domain results are obtained from the measured time-domain results using the fast Fourier transform. It is shown that the computed results by the parabolic equation technique agree well with the measurement results.