Assessment of weak compressibility in actuator line simulations of wind turbine wakes

Abstract The trend of increasing rotor diameters and tip-speeds has brought about concerns of non-negligible compressibility effects in wind turbine aerodynamics. The investigation of such effects on wakes is particularly difficult when using actuator line models (ALM). This is because crucial regions of the flow, i.e. the direct vicinity of the blade, are not simulated but represented by body forces. To separately assess the impact of compressibility on the wake and the ALM itself, we conduct large-eddy simulations (LES) where the forces of the ALM are prescribed and based on the local sampled velocity (standard procedure), respectively. The LES are based on the weakly-compressible Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). Further to the comparison of (near-)incompressible to compressible simulations we investigate cases with artificially increased compressibility. This is commonly done in weakly-compressible approaches to reduce the computational demand. The investigation with prescribed forces shows that compressibility effects in the wake flow are negligible. Small differences in the wake velocity (of max. 1%) are found to be related to local compressibility effects in the direct vicinity of the ALM. Most significantly, compressibility is found to affect the sampled velocity and thereby accuracy of the ALM.