SIG44 Workshop

Recent Advances in Turbulent Wind-Farm Science

23rd April - 24th April 2026

Imperial College London, United Kingdom

The program is available on the congress website: TBC

Intended scientific scope, topics to be included:

To meet the 2050 climate targets, the European Union (EU) is pushing for an extraordinary scale-up of the wind industry, bringing with it extraordinary technological and scientific challenges. This massive and rapid transformation of the sector—aiming to increase offshore capacity nearly 30-fold in under 30 years— has been supported by a collaborative effort from both the scientific and industrial communities to tackle the numerous challenges it presents.

Wind turbines generate turbulent wakes, and because they are often clustered into wind farms for economic, logistical, and technical reasons, most wind turbines are exposed to upstream wakes, reducing their efficiency, increasing fatigue damage, and ultimately threatening the economic viability of wind farms. As more and increasingly larger turbines are installed, these issues will exacerbate in the run up to the 2050 targets.

The organization of this workshop is driven by exciting recent advancements in the understanding of the complex physics governing wind turbine and wind farm wakes, with profound implications for the future of the wind energy industry. This two-day colloquium aims to bring together leading experts from the turbulence and wind energy communities, including international scholars, industry professionals, and policymakers, to discuss the latest developments in the aerodynamics of turbulent wind turbine and wind farm wakes, both from fundamental and applied perspectives.

The topics this workshop aims to cover include (but are not limited to):

1. New advances in the underlying physics of turbulent/turbulent entrainment.

Turbulent wakes spread and grow through the process of entrainment, which describes the transport and mixing of background fluid into the wake. Recent experiments and DNS simulations have unveiled a particular influence of freestream turbulence on the development of wakes and jets, which are at odds with existing low-fidelity wind turbine wake models. The workshop will provide an opportunity to review these latest advancements, discuss their implications for the wind energy community, and explore the potential for improving current wind turbine wake models.

1. New advances in fidelity of numerical simulations/experimental representations of wind farms/turbines.

Recent high-fidelity LES simulations of wind turbine and wind farm flows have revealed new topics of interest for the wind energy community, including phenomena such as cloud formation, pressure-gravity waves arising from atmospheric stratification, etc. In addition, recent experiments with lab-scale floating wind turbines, wind farms, and turbines exposed to faithful atmospheric turbulence using active-turbulence generating grids have yielded breakthrough results. The workshop will provide an opportunity to present the latest findings from recent experiments and simulations, as well as to discuss new approaches for accurately representing wind turbine and wind farm flows, both experimentally and numerically.

1. New advances in our understanding of the multi-scale dynamics in wind turbine wakes.

Recent studies have highlighted the multiscale nature of wind turbine turbulent wakes, with low- and high-frequency dynamics whose importance varies depending on the location within the wake, the turbine’s operating point, the freestream conditions, etc. These dynamics play a crucial role in the flow recovery. This workshop will bring together the latest insights into single turbine wakes, with a focus on wake recovery and dynamics, and explore how these insights can contribute to the development of more accurate wind turbine and wind farm wake models.

1. New advances in understanding the interaction between atmospheric turbulence and wind turbine and wind farm flows.

Considered by Paul Veers et al. (Grand Challenges in the Science of Wind Energy, Science 366, eaau2027, 2019) as one of the three major challenges in wind energy research, a deeper understanding of wind farm flow physics across scales is still needed, particularly regarding the interaction between atmospheric turbulence and wind farm flows. This workshop will provide a platform to discuss recent advancements, notably in remote sensing technologies for atmospheric phenomena and full-scale in-farm wake measurements (e.g. LiDAR), as well as in LES simulations of wind farm flows and mesoscale modelling tools.

More broadly, this workshop will bring together leading experts to discuss the latest advancements in wind turbine and wind farm turbulent flows, covering both fundamental and applied topics. We invite new contributions that deepen our understanding of these complex turbulent flows and improve the accuracy of wake models, ultimately supporting the development of more efficient and optimised wind farms.

P​rogramme: T​BC

Workshop website: TBC