The Impact of Excavation Depth of a Slope Terrain Hoisting Platform on Wind Resources

Abstract Wind energy, as an important component of renewable energy, is inexhaustible and has developed rapidly in recent years. With the increasing installed capacity of wind turbines, more and more turbines are being installed on complex terrains such as ridges. The installation of wind turbines on complex terrains can easily lead to the formation of slope terrains, altering the original topography and, consequently, changing the distribution of wind resources, which seriously affects the power generation efficiency and safe operation of wind turbines. This study focuses on a two-dimensional ridge as the research object, generating a realistic atmospheric turbulent wind field based on the NSRFG method to serve as inflow conditions. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is employed to conduct numerical simulations of five excavation depths for the lifting platform. The results indicate that as the excavation depth increases, the wind speed variations in the low-height region (z < 1H) become more pronounced. Specifically, the wind speed variation range at an excavation depth of 0.195H is 5.6 times that at 0.075H, demonstrating that the size of the excavation depth significantly affects the wind speed distribution at low heights. Therefore, the greater the depth, the more dramatic the wind speed changes, with 0.075H being the optimal depth among the five excavation depths.