Flow Distortion Calculations and Their Application in HEXMAX

Abstract

Several methods are examined for correction of turbulence and eddy fluxes in the atmospheric boundary layer, two of them based on a potential-flow approach initiated by Wyngaard. If the distorting object is cylindrical or if the distance to the sensor is much greater than the size of the body, the undisturbed wind stress can be calculated solely from measurements made by the sensor itself; no auxiliary measurements or lengthy model calculations are needed. A more general potential-flow correction has been developed in which distorting objects of complex shape are represented as a number of ellipsoidal elements. These models are applied to data from three turbulence anemometers with differing amounts of flow distortion, operated simultaneously in the Humidity Exchange over the Sea (HEXOS) Main Experiment. The results are compared with wind-stress estimates by the inertial-dissipation technique; these are much less sensitive to local flow distortion and are consistent with the corrected eddy correlation results. From these comparisons it is concluded that the commonly used ?tilt correction? is not sufficient to correct eddy wind stress for distortion by nearby objects, such as probe supports and neighboring sensors. Neither potential-flow method is applicable to distortion by larger bodies of a scale comparable to the measuring height, such as the superstructure of the Meetpost Noordwijk (MPN) platform used in HEXOS. Flow distortion has been measured around a model of MPN in a wind tunnel study. The results were used to correct mean winds, but simulation of distortion effects on turbulence levels and wind stress turned out not to be feasible.