Parametric study of Coriolis effects on wind turbine wakes in a conventionally neutral atmospheric boundary layer

Coriolis forces, which arise due to Earth's rotation, affect the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The structure of the ABL affects wind turbine wake dynamics indirectly, leading to effects such as wake skewing due to wind veer. Additionally, wakes are dynamically altered by Coriolis forces directly. This study uses large eddy simulations (LES) of a conventionally neutral ABL to explore the parametric dependence of direct and indirect effects of Coriolis forces on wake development. The Rossby number, which controls the strength of Coriolis forcing, is varied by changing the driving geostrophic wind speed. Time-averaged momentum budgets are analyzed to investigate wake evolution, focusing on the wake structure and recovery as a function of Coriolis forcing. In the streamwise direction, the effect of changing the Rossby number manifests primarily through indirect interactions with the ABL. As the strength of Coriolis forcing increases, the lateral momentum contributions are increasingly important, relative to the streamwise momentum. Net lateral advection depends parametrically on the Rossby number. Simplified LES experiments are used to parse the competing effects of pressure gradients, Reynolds stresses, and direct Coriolis forces in the lateral momentum balance.