The exchange of momentum and heat in the ABL is mainly driven by turbulence. Turbulence is always three-dimensional and covers a wide range of scales. Traditional measurement systems are mostly point measurements from which the size of eddies can be derived using Taylor’s hypothesis of frozen turbulence. Getting a more realistic picture of three-dimensional turbulence in complex flow such as in the mountain boundary layer, or behind wind turbines, could be achieved with spatially distributed measurements. For this purpose, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics is operating a fleet of small quadrotor UAS which measures three-dimensional wind vector, temperature and humidity. How to distribute the UAS in space in order to sample turbulence on different scales in the best way is a non-trivial problem. To plan future experiments, a simulation-setup shall be developed in the proposed work which allows to test different flight strategies and determine the associated uncertainties in the derived turbulence parameters.

Subtasks:

• literature review of turbulent atmospheric flow structures and sampling methods
• definition of the required numerical simulation for a virtual measurement
• create a virtual framework for point measurements in a three-dimensional flow field.
• test of different flight strategies in the virtual framework (variation of the number of UAS, distances, flight duration…)
• analysis of uncertainties