The noise characteristics of wind turbines are disadvantageous to their development. In this study, the aerodynamic performance of a novel variable-pitch vertical-axis wind turbine under fluctuating wind flow was simulated using the RANS model. This study analyzes the effects of the parameters of fluctuating wind flow, such as its amplitude and frequency, on the aerodynamic characteristics of a wind turbine. The aerodynamic noise characteristics of wind turbines were obtained using the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) equation. The effects of the distance from the monitoring point and fluctuating wind flow parameters on the noise characteristics of the wind turbine were also analyzed. The results indicate that the turbine’s power coefficient increases with the amplitude of the fluctuating inflow. When the inflow amplitude reaches 50% of the mean velocity, the power coefficient exhibits a 10.15% increase compared to that under uniform inflow conditions. The power coefficient first increases with the frequency of the fluctuating incoming flow, and then decreases, reaching its maximum value at 0.5 Hz. The overall sound pressure level (OASPL) decreased with increasing distance from the wind turbine center. The OASPL on the windward side was higher than that on the leeward side, and the noise amplitude increased with the fluctuating wind amplitude. The influence of the incoming flow frequency on the noise OASPL was not significant.
Zhang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.