An Evaluation of Inflow Profiles for CFD Modeling of Neutral ABL and Turbulent Airflow over a Hill Model

The implementation of the wind turbine is a major issue in the wind engineering sector. However, the presence of wind turbines in the lower part of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) requires an appropriate study for the simulation of turbulent airflow in the wind farm situated on hilly terrain. The use of precise Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations for the ABL flow is vital for numerous applications, such as wind energy, building, urban planning, etc. To achieve accurate results, it is imperative that the inlet boundary conditions produce vertical profiles that keep a uniform horizontal distribution (with no streamwise gradients) in the upstream region of the computational domain for all important parameters. A development approach is proposed herein, focused on the imposition of two different inlet profiles when used in combination with the rough z0-type scalable wall function. The horizontal homogeneity of these profiles has been verified by 2D Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) through the examination of a neutral ABL in an empty computational domain using the k-ε turbulence model. The findings indicate that the use of this modeling approach can yield relatively consistent homogeneity of neutral ABL for both inlet boundary conditions. Subsequently, sensitivity analyses were performed on the inflow profiles to forecast the evolution of the bottom half of an idealized truly-neutral ABL and to accurately capture the complex dynamics of atmospheric flows over hilly terrain. This study compares the results with the CRIACIV (Inter-University Research Centre on Building Aerodynamics and Wind Engineering) boundary layer wind tunnel experimental data, showing that the inflow profiles and the presence of topographic complex have a significant impact on air velocity, turbulent kinetic energy and turbulence intensity in the x-direction. The results obtained are in good correlation with published experimental data in the presence of the hill surface.