Development and validation of physics-based models for wakes of large offshore wind farms

Project Description:

This project is closed to new applicants.

This PhD scholarship is offered by the EPSRC CDT in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience; a partnership between the Universities of Durham, Hull, Loughborough and Sheffield. The project is sponsored by the industry partner, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult. The successful applicant will undertake six-months of training with the rest of the CDT cohort at the University of Hull, before continuing their PhD research at Durham University, in collaboration with Loughborough University, Imperial College London and ORE Catapult,  bringing together leading expertise in wind energy, fluid mechanics, and atmospheric science. The student will benefit from a strong supervisory team with complementary skills and perspectives, ensuring access to world-class facilities, industrial insight, and a vibrant multi-institutional research environment.

Offshore wind is entering a new era of unprecedented scale and ambition. Where turbines once stood 100 m tall and generated just a few megawatts, today’s designs exceed 300 m and produce over 20 MW each. Wind farms themselves are expanding from hundreds of megawatts to multi-gigawatt (GW) clusters covering areas comparable to small counties. At this scale, offshore wind farms no longer behave as minor perturbations to the atmosphere: they fundamentally reshape the structure and dynamics of the marine atmospheric boundary layer.

These new dimensions bring fresh scientific challenges. Turbines can now extend beyond the atmospheric boundary layer (i.e., the lowest layer in the atmosphere) into the stably stratified layers aloft, triggering phenomena such as gravity waves that propagate far downstream. Likewise, the turbulent wakes of modern wind farms can persist for tens of kilometres, reducing the efficiency of neighbouring farms in crowded offshore regions. The potential economic impact of these wake interactions has become one of the most debated topics in the wind energy community, sparking intense discussions among developers and regulators and, in some cases, disputes over responsibilities and compensation. On top of these effects, Earth’s rotation introduces Coriolis forces that deflect the wakes of wind farms in complex, scale-dependent ways, adding an additional degree of uncertainty to predicting wind-farm–atmosphere interactions.

This project will investigate the aerodynamic coupling between large offshore wind farms and the atmosphere, focusing on three poorly understood mechanisms: (i) gravity-wave–induced blockage, (ii) long-range inter-farm wake effects, and (iii) Coriolis-driven modifications to farm-scale flow structures. The work will build on a novel physics-based wake model recently developed by our group, which provides a pioneering framework but requires extension and validation for the extreme scales of next-generation farms. The research will combine laboratory experiments (in collaboration with Imperial College London) and in-house high-fidelity simulations to uncover the underlying physics, with reduced-order modelling to translate those insights into practical design and planning tools. The ultimate goal is to establish predictive models that can guide the layout and operation of next-generation offshore wind developments, enabling them to meet ambitious climate and energy targets while minimising atmospheric and inter-farm losses.

Training and Development

You will benefit from a taught programme, giving you a broad understanding of the breadth and depth of current and emerging offshore wind sector needs. This begins with an intensive six-month programme at the University of Hull for the new student intake, drawing on the expertise and facilities of all four academic partners. It is supplemented by Continuing Professional Development (CPD), which is embedded throughout your 4-year research scholarship.

Dependent on the successful candidate’s experience, there will opportunity to attend specific post-graduate level modules in areas such as fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, robotics.

If you have any queries about this project, please contact Dr Majid Bastankhah (majid.bastankhah@durham.ac.uk).

You may also address queries about the CDT to auracdt@hull.ac.uk.

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