Brief communication: A clarification of wake recovery mechanisms

Abstract. Understanding wind turbine wake recovery is important for developing models of wind turbine interaction employed in the design of energy-efficient wind farm layouts. Wake recovery is often assumed or explained to be a shear-driven process; however, this is generally not accurate. In this work we show that wind turbine wakes recover mainly due to the divergence (lateral and vertical gradients) of Reynolds shear stresses, which transport momentum from the freestream towards the wake center. The wake recovery mechanisms are illustrated using a simple analytic model and results of large-eddy simulation.