Have I mentioned turbulence? Ah, I see I have.*
From Offshore Engineer, March 11:
Better Algorithms Developed for Offshore Wind Turbulence Measurement
Accurate measurements of atmospheric turbulence enable durable and efficient wind turbine design as well as optimized wind farm operation. To advance this, Vaisala participated in a research consortium with global wind energy players to develop better algorithms that improve measurement accuracy of turbulence in offshore weather conditions.
Turbulence can induce loads on wind turbines, and the research project, the POWSEIDOM JIP, led by France Energies Marines, aims to provide the industry with high-performance measurement and modelling tools.
Installing traditional met masts and anemometers offshore is often impractical due to the high costs of installation, operation and maintenance. Lidar technology is cost-effective and reliable, but there has been a need to develop proper algorithms to derive turbulence metrics from the lidar signal, as lidars have not been widely used to characterize atmospheric turbulence at sea in the past.
To gather data, the researchers used a Vaisala WindCube v2.1 profiling lidar at the research site at Planier Island. Located 9km offshore, this site allowed them to capture undisturbed atmospheric events that represent the conditions encountered at floating offshore wind farm sites in the Mediterranean. At the end of the first 12 months of the research period, the measurements taken with lidar enabled them to compile a valuable set of data (mean winds and direction, turbulence intensity, shear, occurrence and intensity of low-layer jets)....
January 2020 - "The Trouble With Turbulence
In the introduction to a post on fish and the Little Ice Age last July I mentioned how mind-bendingly complex fluid dynamics can be. More after the jump but first, Nautil.us Earth, jointly published by Nautilus and the American Geosciences Institute:
The Scientific Problem That Must Be Experienced
To understand turbulence we need the intuitive perspective of art....
September 2021 - "Think You're Smart Don'tcha: Figure This Out And Make A Million Bucks"
In last week's post "Fluid Dynamics (and the filth on your phone)" I made the assertion "This is one of those fields of study that are so mind-bogglingly complex that....", without supplying any supporting statements or facts.(in these situations the reader can assume I am relying on the Charlie Munger all-purpose turnaround: "Think about it a little more and you will agree with me because you're smart and I'm right.")But for folks who require a bit of backup, here is Ars Technica, followed by the Clay Mathematics Institute, along with a cameo by Feynmann for added "Appeal to Authority":Turbulence, the oldest unsolved problem in physics....
June 2023 - "Figure This Out And Make A Million Bucks: Now With Penguins"
June 2023 - Follow-up To "Figure This Out And Make A Million Bucks...":
There is a lot more money involved than just the million dollars from the Millennium Prize for understanding fluid dynamics and turbulence. In the climate arena the coupled climate models are still not all that skillful when trying to comprehend the interactions of the sea and the atmosphere, a huge and extraordinarily complex part of the whole picture and not that well understood.
On a much smaller scale, understanding turbulence can be worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars when siting turbines on a wind farm....
Fluid dynamics, very important....
And many, many more.
