Wind Turbine Wake Steering

Upstream Turbine Yaw

Yaw angle γ 0°

Wind & Layout

Freestream wind speed U_∞ 9.0 m/s

Turbine spacing 6.0 D

Ambient turbulence intensity 8%

Live Readouts

Upstream power

0.00 MW

Downstream power

0.00 MW

Wake deflection at T2

0.0 m

Wind speed at T2 rotor

0.0 m/s

Combined power vs. no-yaw baseline

+0.0%

How it works

Yawing an upstream turbine tilts its rotor disk relative to the wind, which skews the low-speed wake it sheds sideways — deflecting it away from a turbine sitting directly downwind. This trades a little of the upstream turbine's own power for a lot more wind reaching the downstream one; wind-farm controllers use it deliberately ("wake steering") to raise total farm output.

Wake centerline deflection follows the Jiménez et al. (2010) engineering model. The initial skew angle set by the rotor is

θ₀ = ½ · C_T · sin(γ) · cos²(γ)

and it decays as the wake expands with downstream distance x (wake radius r(x) = D/2 + k·x), giving a deflection that accumulates and then flattens out:

θ(x) = θ₀ · (D/2)² / r(x)²
δ(x) = ∫₀ˣ θ(x′) dx′

The velocity deficit inside the wake follows the self-similar Gaussian model of Bastankhah & Porté-Agel, with wake width σ(x) = k·x + 0.2D and centerline deficit

C(x) = 1 − √(1 − C_T / (8·(σ/D)²))
ΔU(y,x)/U∞ = C(x) · exp(−½·((y−δ(x))/σ)²)

The expansion rate k = 0.3837·TI + 0.003678 (Niayifar & Porté-Agel, 2016) — higher ambient turbulence mixes the wake back to full speed faster, over a shorter distance. Turbine power below rated wind speed follows P = ½ρAU³C_p, capped at rated power above ~11.5 m/s; the yawed upstream turbine loses roughly cos³(γ) of its own power to actuator-disk theory (field data from real farms often show a shallower loss, closer to cos^1.9(γ), because pitch controllers partly compensate — this simulator uses the simpler textbook cos³ law).

Yaw angle — misaligns turbine 1's rotor with the wind, both losing it power and steering its wake sideways.
Wind speed — sets thrust coefficient C_T and both turbines' raw power via the cubic power law.
Spacing — how far downstream turbine 2 sits, in rotor diameters D.
Turbulence intensity — how quickly the wake mixes back to full speed.

Slow / wake-deficit flow Recovered / freestream flow

wind →

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