The near wake structure of a vertical axis wind turbine: Including the Development of a 3D Unsteady Free-Wake Panel Method for VAWTs

A 3D unsteady multi-body panel method is developed that can model arbitrary geometries. The method has been specifically designed so that it can handle the blade-wake interactions and viscous wake effects that are important for modelling a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). A systematic validation and verification of the model is presented...