Articles | Volume 11, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-3775-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-3775-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Brief communication
| 
02 Oct 2026
Brief communication |
| 02 Oct 2026
| 02 Oct 2026
Brief communication: A novel wake mixing phenomenon and key parameters for wake recovery of floating wind turbines subjected to surge motions
Christian W. Schulz
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Hamburg University of Technology, Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Ship Theory, Hamburg, Germany
Michael Hölling
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, School of Mathematics and Science, Institute of Physics, Oldenburg, Germany
ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research, Küpkersweg 70, Oldenburg 26129, Germany
Joachim Peinke
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, School of Mathematics and Science, Institute of Physics, Oldenburg, Germany
ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research, Küpkersweg 70, Oldenburg 26129, Germany
Thomas Messmer
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, School of Mathematics and Science, Institute of Physics, Oldenburg, Germany
ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research, Küpkersweg 70, Oldenburg 26129, Germany
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Wind Engineering and Renewable Energy Laboratory (WIRE), EPFL-ENAC-IIE-WIRE, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
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Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1941–1965, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1941-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1941-2024, 2024
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The ability to perform reliable simulations of the motion behaviour of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is a key requirement for developing resource- and cost-effective designs. To support the development of suitable simulation methods, multiple improvements to the validation process of such methods are presented. These improvements allow, for the first time, the transient aerodynamic loads acting on a FOWT in a wave tank experiment to be directly compared with simulations.
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Understanding the underlying physical phenomena of the aerodynamics of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is crucial for successful simulations. No consensus has been reached in the research community on which unsteady aerodynamic phenomena are relevant and how much they can influence the loads acting on a FOWT. This work contributes to the understanding and characterisation of such unsteady phenomena using a novel experimental approach and comprehensive numerical investigations.
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Revised manuscript under review for WES
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Wind Energ. Sci., 11, 1531–1552, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-1531-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-1531-2026, 2026
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Carsten Schubert, Daniela Moreno, Jörg Schwarte, Jan Friedrich, Matthias Wächter, Gritt Pokriefke, Günter Radons, and Joachim Peinke
Wind Energ. Sci., 11, 1267–1285, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-1267-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-1267-2026, 2026
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Marcel Bock, Daniela Moreno, and Joachim Peinke
Wind Energ. Sci., 11, 103–126, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-103-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-103-2026, 2026
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Various simulation tools exist to provide load forecasts in the wind energy field (engineering models and numerical simulations). A newly introduced concept is the center of wind pressure, a quantity extracted from a wind field. In previous works, similar behaviour, then the main shaft bending moments, was shown. However, a clear relationship is missing. In this work, this gap is filled through the introduction of a calibration parameter.
Daniela Moreno, Jan Friedrich, Carsten Schubert, Matthias Wächter, Jörg Schwarte, Gritt Pokriefke, Günter Radons, and Joachim Peinke
Wind Energ. Sci., 10, 2729–2754, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-2729-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-2729-2025, 2025
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Increased sizes of modern turbines require extended descriptions of the atmospheric wind and its correlation to loads. Here, a surrogate stochastic method for estimating the bending moments at the main shaft is proposed. Based on the center of wind pressure dynamics, an advantage is the possibility of stochastically reconstructing large amounts of load data. Atmospheric measurements and modeled data demonstrate the validity of this method.
Christian Wiedemann, Henrik Bette, Matthias Wächter, Jan A. Freund, Thomas Guhr, and Joachim Peinke
Wind Energ. Sci., 10, 2489–2497, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-2489-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-2489-2025, 2025
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Daniela Moreno, Jan Friedrich, Matthias Wächter, Jörg Schwarte, and Joachim Peinke
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Unexpected load events measured on operating wind turbines are not accurately predicted by numerical simulations. We introduce the periods of constant wind speed as a possible cause of such events. We measure and characterize their statistics from atmospheric data. Further comparisons to standard modelled data and experimental turbulence data suggest that such events are not intrinsic to small-scale turbulence and are not accurately described by current standard wind models.
Christian W. Schulz, Stefan Netzband, Philip D. Knipper, and Moustafa Abdel-Maksoud
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1941–1965, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1941-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1941-2024, 2024
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The ability to perform reliable simulations of the motion behaviour of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is a key requirement for developing resource- and cost-effective designs. To support the development of suitable simulation methods, multiple improvements to the validation process of such methods are presented. These improvements allow, for the first time, the transient aerodynamic loads acting on a FOWT in a wave tank experiment to be directly compared with simulations.
Christian W. Schulz, Stefan Netzband, Umut Özinan, Po Wen Cheng, and Moustafa Abdel-Maksoud
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Short summary
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Understanding the underlying physical phenomena of the aerodynamics of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is crucial for successful simulations. No consensus has been reached in the research community on which unsteady aerodynamic phenomena are relevant and how much they can influence the loads acting on a FOWT. This work contributes to the understanding and characterisation of such unsteady phenomena using a novel experimental approach and comprehensive numerical investigations.
Stefano Cioni, Francesco Papi, Leonardo Pagamonci, Alessandro Bianchini, Néstor Ramos-García, Georg Pirrung, Rémi Corniglion, Anaïs Lovera, Josean Galván, Ronan Boisard, Alessandro Fontanella, Paolo Schito, Alberto Zasso, Marco Belloli, Andrea Sanvito, Giacomo Persico, Lijun Zhang, Ye Li, Yarong Zhou, Simone Mancini, Koen Boorsma, Ricardo Amaral, Axelle Viré, Christian W. Schulz, Stefan Netzband, Rodrigo Soto-Valle, David Marten, Raquel Martín-San-Román, Pau Trubat, Climent Molins, Roger Bergua, Emmanuel Branlard, Jason Jonkman, and Amy Robertson
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1659–1691, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1659-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1659-2023, 2023
Short summary
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Simulations of different fidelities made by the participants of the OC6 project Phase III are compared to wind tunnel wake measurements on a floating wind turbine. Results in the near wake confirm that simulations and experiments tend to diverge from the expected linearized quasi-steady behavior when the reduced frequency exceeds 0.5. In the far wake, the impact of platform motion is overestimated by simulations and even seems to be oriented to the generation of a wake less prone to dissipation.
Roger Bergua, Amy Robertson, Jason Jonkman, Emmanuel Branlard, Alessandro Fontanella, Marco Belloli, Paolo Schito, Alberto Zasso, Giacomo Persico, Andrea Sanvito, Ervin Amet, Cédric Brun, Guillén Campaña-Alonso, Raquel Martín-San-Román, Ruolin Cai, Jifeng Cai, Quan Qian, Wen Maoshi, Alec Beardsell, Georg Pirrung, Néstor Ramos-García, Wei Shi, Jie Fu, Rémi Corniglion, Anaïs Lovera, Josean Galván, Tor Anders Nygaard, Carlos Renan dos Santos, Philippe Gilbert, Pierre-Antoine Joulin, Frédéric Blondel, Eelco Frickel, Peng Chen, Zhiqiang Hu, Ronan Boisard, Kutay Yilmazlar, Alessandro Croce, Violette Harnois, Lijun Zhang, Ye Li, Ander Aristondo, Iñigo Mendikoa Alonso, Simone Mancini, Koen Boorsma, Feike Savenije, David Marten, Rodrigo Soto-Valle, Christian W. Schulz, Stefan Netzband, Alessandro Bianchini, Francesco Papi, Stefano Cioni, Pau Trubat, Daniel Alarcon, Climent Molins, Marion Cormier, Konstantin Brüker, Thorsten Lutz, Qing Xiao, Zhongsheng Deng, Florence Haudin, and Akhilesh Goveas
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 465–485, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-465-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-465-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
This work examines if the motion experienced by an offshore floating wind turbine can significantly affect the rotor performance. It was observed that the system motion results in variations in the load, but these variations are not critical, and the current simulation tools capture the physics properly. Interestingly, variations in the rotor speed or the blade pitch angle can have a larger impact than the system motion itself.
Frederik Berger, Lars Neuhaus, David Onnen, Michael Hölling, Gerard Schepers, and Martin Kühn
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 1827–1846, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1827-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1827-2022, 2022
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We proof the dynamic inflow effect due to gusts in wind tunnel experiments with MoWiTO 1.8 in the large wind tunnel of ForWind – University of Oldenburg, where we created coherent gusts with an active grid. The effect is isolated in loads and rotor flow by comparison of a quasi-steady and a dynamic case. The observed effect is not caught by common dynamic inflow engineering models. An improvement to the Øye dynamic inflow model is proposed, matching experiment and corresponding FVWM simulations.
Marijn Floris van Dooren, Anantha Padmanabhan Kidambi Sekar, Lars Neuhaus, Torben Mikkelsen, Michael Hölling, and Martin Kühn
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 15, 1355–1372, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-1355-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-1355-2022, 2022
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The remote sensing technique lidar is widely used for wind speed measurements for both industrial and academic applications. Lidars can measure wind statistics accurately but cannot fully capture turbulent fluctuations in the high-frequency range, since they are partly filtered out. This paper therefore investigates the turbulence spectrum measured by a continuous-wave lidar and analytically models the lidar's measured spectrum with a Lorentzian filter function and a white noise term.
Paul Hulsman, Martin Wosnik, Vlaho Petrović, Michael Hölling, and Martin Kühn
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 237–257, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-237-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-237-2022, 2022
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Due to the possibility of mapping the wake fast at multiple locations with the WindScanner, a thorough understanding of the development of the wake is acquired at different inflow conditions and operational conditions. The lidar velocity data and the energy dissipation rate compared favourably with hot-wire data from previous experiments, lending credibility to the measurement technique and methodology used here. This will aid the process to further improve existing wake models.
Ingrid Neunaber, Joachim Peinke, and Martin Obligado
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 201–219, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-201-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-201-2022, 2022
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Wind turbines are often clustered within wind farms. A consequence is that some wind turbines may be exposed to the wakes of other turbines, which reduces their lifetime due to the wake turbulence. Knowledge of the wake is thus important, and we carried out wind tunnel experiments to investigate the wakes. We show how models that describe wakes of bluff bodies can help to improve the understanding of wind turbine wakes and wind turbine wake models, particularly by including a virtual origin.
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Short summary
Floating wind turbines move with waves and wind, surging back and forth. Using wind tunnel experiments, we show that this motion can help the wake (the disturbed air trailing the turbine) recover faster, so downwind turbines receive more wind. This effect is strong when the turbine pulls hard on the wind, known as high thrust. We also discovered a new effect: recovery improves when the surging is just slightly slower than the blades' spin. This could make floating wind farms more efficient.
Floating wind turbines move with waves and wind, surging back and forth. Using wind tunnel...
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