Turbulence is an everyday phenomenon and occurs in many natural systems. As an example his the smoke plume of a cigarette or a chimney, the swirling currents of flowing waters or atmospheric winds as a whole. In all cases, the complexity of turbulent flow fields leads to the fact that an exact prediction or calculation of the resulting flows is no longer possible. For this reason, statistical model concepts, which are mainly influenced by the ideas of Kolmogorov (1941) and Richardson (1922), become very important in the analysis of turbulent flow fields. 

In this field of work, the small-scale turbulence of atmospheric wind velocity fields is studied using statistical models. For this purpose, the obtained results are compared with those from laboratory experiments. This approach has the advantage that the results from laboratory experiments - mainly wind tunnel or free jet measurements - are known and have been studied many times. Based on these results, differences and similarities between laboratory turbulence and atmospheric turbulence can be identified. In particular, conclusions can be drawn as to which properties occur universally in both systems and which are to be considered specific to the atmospheric wind field. In this context, the atmospheric wind field is significantly more complex than the 'controlled' laboratory turbulence, in which stability effects and orographic inhomogeneities can be excluded. In particular, atmospheric wind is highly unsteady, whereas steady-state flows can be easily generated in the laboratory. 

Special attention is given to the problem of wind gusts. Among other things, the question of a physical structure of wind gusts is investigated. It has been shown in the course of previous investigations that gusts can be explained by the anomalous statistics of small-scale atmospheric turbulence. 

Wind energy research takes place within the framework of ForWind. 

Currently, the following topics are being worked on:

Rotor modeling 
Atmospheric turbulence 
Rayleigh-Bénard system 
Flow simulation 
Model Wind Turbines
Active grid