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The actuator line method (ALM) is an approach commonly used to represent lifting and dragging devices like wings and blades in large-eddy simulations (LES). The crux of the ALM is the projection of the actuator point forces onto the LES grid by means of a Gaussian regularisation kernel. The minimum width of the kernel is constrained by the grid size; however, for most practical applications like LES of wind turbines, this value is an order of magnitude larger than the optimal value which maximises accuracy. This discrepancy motivated the development of corrections for the actuator line, which, however, neglect the effect of unsteady spanwise shed vorticity. In this work, we develop a model for the impact of spanwise shed vorticity on the unsteady loading of an airfoil modelled as a Gaussian body force. The model solution is derived both in the time and frequency domain and features an explicit dependence on the Gaussian kernel width. We validate the model with LES within the linear regime of the lift curve for both pitch steps and periodic pitching with reduced frequencies of k=0.1, 0.2 and 0.3. The Gaussian kernel width affects, in particular, the amplitude of the unsteady lift, which can be up to 40% smaller than the quasi-steady amplitude within the considered range of reduced frequencies and kernel widths.

We investigate the dynamic response of flexible aircraft in low-altitude atmospheric turbulence. To this end, three turbulence models of increasing fidelity, namely, the one-dimensional von K{\'a}rm{\'a}n model, the two-dimensional Kaimal model and full three-dimensional wind fields extracted from large-eddy simulations (LES) are used to simulate ambient turbulence near the ground. Load calculations and flight trajectory predictions are conducted for a flexible high-aspect ratio aircraft, using a fully coupled nonlinear flight dynamics/aeroelastic model, when it operates in background atmospheric turbulence generated by the aforementioned models. Comparison of load envelopes and spectral content, on vehicles of varying flexibility, shows strong dependency between the selected turbulence model and aircraft aeroelastic response (e.g. 58\% difference in the predicted magnitude of the wing root bending moment between LES and von K{\'a}rm{\'a}n models). This is mainly due to the presence of large flow structures at low altitudes that have comparable dimensions to the vehicle, and which despite the relatively small wind speeds within the Earth boundary layer, result in overall high load events. Results show that one-dimensional models that do not capture those effects provide fairly non-conservative load estimates and are unsuitable for very flexible airframe design.

Turbulence-resolving simulations of wind turbine wakes are presented using a high--order flow solver combined with both a standard and a novel dynamic implicit spectral vanishing viscosity (iSVV and dynamic iSVV) model to account for subgrid-scale (SGS) stresses. The numerical solutions are compared against wind tunnel measurements, which include mean velocity and turbulent intensity profiles, as well as integral rotor quantities such as power and thrust coefficients. For the standard (also termed static) case the magnitude of the spectral vanishing viscosity is selected via a heuristic analysis of the wake statistics, while in the case of the dynamic model the magnitude is adjusted both in space and time at each time step. The study focuses on examining the ability of the two approaches, standard (static) and dynamic, to accurately capture the wake features, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results suggest that the static method can become over-dissipative when the magnitude of the spectral viscosity is increased, while the dynamic approach which adjusts the magnitude of dissipation locally is shown to be more appropriate for a non-homogeneous flow such that of a wind turbine wake.

Numerical models of the flow and wakes due to turbines operating within a real-scale offshore wind farm can lead to a prohibitively large computational cost, particularly when considering blade-resolved simulations. With the introduction of turbine parametrizations such as the actuator disk (AD) or the actuator line (AL) models, this problem has been partially addressed, yet the computational cost associated with these simulations remains high. In this work, we present an implementation and validation of an AL model within the mesh-adaptive three-dimensional fluid dynamics solver, Fluidity, under a unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes based turbulence modelling approach. A key feature of this implementation is the use of mesh optimization techniques, which allow for the automatic refinement or coarsening of the mesh locally according to the resolution needed by the fluid flow solver. The model is first validated against experimental data from wind tunnel tests. Finally, we demonstrate the benefits of mesh-adaptivity by considering flow past the Lillgrund offshore wind farm.