Call for papers

Recent Advances in Turbulent Wind Farm Dynamics

Submission deadline: 30 September 2026 [2026.09.30]

This Themed Collection will report on results aligned with the “Advances in Turbulent Wind Farm Dynamics Colloquium,” organized in London in April 2026 in partnership with ERCOFTAC, Euromech, and EPSRC. Contributions are invited from all authors, not just those attending the colloquium.

 This workshop is motivated by the European Union’s significant expansion of wind energy, especially offshore wind. This shift is unmatched in both scale and speed. Offshore wind capacity is projected to grow nearly thirtyfold in less than thirty years, presenting major scientific, technological, and industrial challenges. Addressing these challenges requires close cooperation between academia and industry, since sector growth depends not only on deployment but also on ongoing advances in our understanding of wind turbine and wind farm aerodynamics.

 A central challenge is the turbulent wake generated by wind turbines. Because turbines are typically grouped into wind farms for economic, logistical, and technical reasons, many operate in the wakes of upstream turbines. These wakes reduce power output, increase unsteady loading and fatigue, and can affect the long-term reliability and economic viability of wind farms. As turbines become larger and wind farms denser, these wake effects become even more important. A better understanding of wake physics is therefore essential for improving wind farm performance and supporting future large-scale deployment.

 The collection is motivated by recent progress in the study of wind turbine and wind farm wakes. It seeks to bring together leading experts from the turbulence and wind energy communities, including international researchers and industry representatives, to discuss the latest advances in the aerodynamics of turbulent wakes from both fundamental and applied perspectives. The goal is to promote cross-disciplinary exchange and identify new directions for research, measurement, simulation, and model development.

One important theme is wake spreading and recovery through turbulent entrainment, that is, the transport and mixing of surrounding fluid into the wake. Recent experiments and direct numerical simulations have revealed a stronger and more complex role of freestream turbulence than assumed in many low-fidelity wake models. These findings raise important questions about wake development and how engineering models can be improved.

 A second theme is progress in high-fidelity numerical simulations and experimental representations of turbines and wind farms. Large-eddy simulations have revealed important phenomena such as atmospheric stratification effects, cloud interactions, and pressure-gravity waves. At the same time, wind tunnel experiments using active turbulence generation, together with lab-scale studies of floating wind turbines and wind farms, are providing increasingly realistic datasets for validation and model development.

 A third theme concerns the multiscale dynamics of wind turbine wakes. Recent studies have shown that wakes contain both low- and high-frequency structures, whose importance depends on turbine operating conditions, inflow turbulence, and downstream position. These dynamics strongly influence wake recovery and are highly relevant for improved reduced-order and engineering wake models.

 Finally, the collection addresses the interaction between atmospheric turbulence and wind-turbine or wind-farm flows across scales, a major challenge in wind energy science. Recent advances in remote sensing, LiDAR, field measurements, large-eddy simulation, and mesoscale modelling offer new opportunities to investigate these interactions under realistic conditions.

 Overall, the Themed Collection highlights recent advances in turbulent wind-turbine and wind-farm flows, ranging from fundamental fluid mechanics to practical modelling approaches. It welcomes contributions that deepen physical understanding, improve predictive tools, and support the design of more efficient and optimized wind farms.

We invite Research Articles, Flow Rapids, Case Studies & Review Articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes: 

• Turbulent Entrainment
• Wind turbine flows
• Floating wind turbine flows
• LES of wind farm flows
• Full-scale and satellite measurements of wind farm flows
• Wind turbine and wind farm control

 

Submission deadline: 30th September 2026

 

Guest Editors

Oliver Buxton, Imperial College London, UK

Richard Stevens, University of Twente, Netherlands

Bharath Ganapathisubramani, University of Southampton, UK, Associate Editor of Flow