Prof. Dr. Stefan Heinz 

Wind energy problems (flow around turbines in wind farms) are characterized by extremely challenging flow regimes. The accurate and efficient analysis of these flow patterns via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) poses a huge challenge. Basically, standard CFD methods are incapable of dealing with reliable and feasible predictions of such flow regimes: they are either way too expensive computationally or they are known to often provide unreliable results. Combinations of existing methods were suggested as an alternative. However, such existing methods face significant problems because of the uncontrolled balance of their ingredients. As a consequence, existing combination methods do not offer an alternative to pure methods so far. The applicant developed a mathematical exact solution to the combination of existing computational methods. First realistic applications show the huge potential of the novel methods. For the first time, we have access to reliable simulation methods that behave stably under strong variations of conditions. In particular, for the first time we are in the position to provide reliable predictions of extreme flow regimes relevant to wind energy problems (where all existing methods are hardly applicable). The goal of the proposed project is to explicitly demonstrate the advantages of our new methods for wind energy simulations based on an existing, long-term collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oldenburg.