RANS simulation of neutral ABL flow over forested complex terrain with wind turbines

Nowadays wind energy represents one of the most exploited renewable energy sources in the world for generating electricity. During the last two decades, its use and the number of installed wind farms has increased dramatically. This rapid growth, which is still ongoing, has led to an ever increasing search for new areas suitable to install WTs. So, in addition to the traditional wind energy sites, complex onshore ones have begun to be explored and at present, they are still being investigated. In these terrains, characterized by a more varied topography and roughness, modeling of the wind conditions comes out to be more challenging. This is due to comparatively higher turbulence levels and wind shear, especially when the terrain is forested.\\ In parallel, many advances have been made in CFD techniques and numerical modeling has become a key tool for industry at several stages, from early wind resource assessment and wind farm design to final management and exploitation. During a wind farm design stage, numerical modeling allows improving the emplacement of wind turbines by optimizing relevant parameters such as expected wind power production, turbulence intensity or wind loads. To be finished..