Actuator forces in CFD: RANS and LES modeling in OpenFOAM

Wind turbine wakes are a very challenging topic for scientific computations, but modern CFD frameworks and latest HPC centers allow setting up numerical computations on the wake induced by the wind turbine. The main issues is that the correct modeling of the wake is related to the correct modeling of the interaction between the blade and the incoming flow. The aim of the proposed work is to estimate the aerodynamic forces acting on the blades in order to correctly generate the rotor wake applying equivalent aerodynamic force source on the flow. The definition of a blade forces is done developing a model able to correctly estimate this aerodynamic forces as a function of the local flow seen by the blade during its revolution.