Starting Area of Wind Fields generated by TurbSim

Hi NREL-Team,

I want to import .bts file generated by TurbSim to QBlade. My questions are where does the wind field start exactly and can I manipulate the starting postion? It seems that there is difference between TurbSim and QBlade.

Kind regards,
Thomas Barsch

Dear Thomas,

By “starting area”, are you asking about the location of the transverse wind field in the YZ plane, or are you asking about the along-wind direction X/time?

Best regards,

Dear Jason,

I´m asking for the distance between the wind turbine and the wind field along-wind direction.

Best regards,
Thomas

Dear Thomas,

This distance is defined in OpenFAST’s InflowWind module, not in TurbSim. For wind data files that are not periodic, the distance is half the grid width downwind of the tower, i.e., the time = 0 plane begins half the grid width downwind of the undeflected tower centerline. This is done so that no aerodynamic analysis nodes are outside of the wind domain even if the rotor is initialized with a +/-90 degree yaw angle. For periodic wind data files, the distance is zero, i.e., the time = 0 plane starts at the undeflected tower centerline. The offset in this case is not needed because periodic wind files essentially propagate indefinitely along the X direction / time.

I hope that helps.

Best regards,

Hi Jason,

can I change this postion for non-periodic wind files?
Thank you a lot for your fast responses. It is a pleasure.

Best,
Thomas

Dear Thomas,

Yes, in InflowWind source file IfW_TSFFWind.f90, change how parameter ParamData%InitXPosition is defined.

Best regards,

Hi Jason,

thank you so much.

Best,
Thomas