Investigation of Tidal Turbine Array Performance Using Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Presence of Waves

Abstract

Tidal turbine arrays have been widely investigated to find the optimum spacing for the efficient performance and less wake generation. Small scaled laboratory tests are usually performed to analyze the structure of wakes prior to the deployment. These tests result in extreme blockage conditions due to the narrowing of channels compared to size of turbines. The main aim is to investigate the behavior of flow around the turbines in blockage conditions and the performance of turbines closed to the free surface in current-only and wave-and-current scenarios. The methodology was based on blade element momentum and computational fluid dynamics approach with the integration of virtual blade model code. The results of this work indicate that the performance of tidal turbine array can be enhanced by up to 7% in blockage conditions in lateral arrangement and 11% in stream wise arrangement. The wake is highly influenced by the surface waves that also increase the performance of downstream turbines.