Research Laboratory at the University of Utah
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Welcome to WET

The Wind Energy and Turbulence laboratory was designed to improve the current understanding of wind energy harvesting. To achieve this goal we dedicate much of our efforts to develop new knowledge on the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. Our focus resides on using high resolution numerical simulations which we ultimately complement with the analysis of experimental data.

Currently we mainly use Large Eddy Simulations, which are capable of resolving most of the atmospheric turbulent scales as well as the wind turbines, providing very good results when compared to the experimental data. We are highly interested in improving the current conception of the land-atmosphere energy exchanges, and our work strives to fill the gaps of our current understanding. It is only by properly capturing the land-atmosphere connection that forces the atmospheric flow aloft that we will be able to reproduce with high accuracy the atmospheric flow.

In case you are interested in our research we encourage you to reach out to us because we are always interested in scientific discussions!

Research interests

• Atmospheric Boundary-Layer turbulence
• Wind Energy
• Land-Atmosphere interactions
• Large-Eddy Simulations
• Thermally stratified flows

Contact Us

Marc Calaf

Marc Calaf

Assistant Professor



Contact informations
Office: 2547 MEK
E-mail: marc.calaf@utah.edu
Phone: (801) 587-3253

Recent Activity

Meet Brooke Stanislawski: New member of the WET lab

Meet Brooke Stanislawski: New member of the WET lab

Masters Student Biography Born in Southern California, I moved to Evanston, IL to attend Northwestern University for a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. As an[...]

New member joins the WET lab: more about Byron Eng

New member joins the WET lab: more about Byron Eng

Byron is a Master Student that just joined us in order to develop some amazing research in our group. Byron grew up in [...]

New article: Turbulence upstream of wind turbines: A large-eddy simulation approach to investigate the use of wind lidars

New article: Turbulence upstream of wind turbines: A large-eddy simulation approach to investigate the use of wind lidars

Journal of Renewable Energy G. Cortina and M. Calaf   Abstract Despite the evolution of wind turbines, the way in which in-situ meteorological information is obtained has [...]

New article: Investigation of the incoming wind vector for improved wind turbine yaw-adjustment under different atmospheric and wind farm conditions

New article: Investigation of the incoming wind vector for improved wind turbine yaw-adjustment under different atmospheric and wind farm conditions

Journal of Renewable Energy G. Cortina ,V. Sharma, M. Calaf Regardless of the evolution of wind energy harvesting, the way in which turbines obtain in-situ meteorological information re[...]

New Article: Distribution of mean kinetic energy around an isolated wind turbine and a characteristic wind turbine of a very large wind farm

New Article: Distribution of mean kinetic energy around an isolated wind turbine and a characteristic wind turbine of a very large wind farm

Gerard Cortina, Marc Calaf, and Raúl Bayoán Cal Phys. Rev. Fluids 1, 074402 (2016) A detailed control volume analysis of the flow around a w[...]