Reviews of fluid dynamics researches in wind energy engineering

Great progress has been achieved in the Chinese wind energy industry. By the end of 2012, according to statistics of CWEA, 75 GW capacity of wind power has been generated in China that pushes the country to the top place in the global wind power market. Nowadays, the technology trend focuses on the offshore wind power and the larger multi-megawatt wind turbine. It brings about several engineering challenges and new scientific problems. In this review, we focus on the advances in fluid dynamics researches related to wind energy engineering, such as the wind properties in atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), micrositing at complex terrain, wake flow behind wind turbine, airfoil design for large blade, aerodynamics for wind turbine, aero-elastic interaction, and offshore wind power technology. We also discuss the limitations of the widely-applicated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. Finally, we point out the weakness of Chinese fundamental researches on winder energy engineering, and provide some suggestions.