Abstract
Tidal energy has the potential to provide a substantial part of the sustainable electric power generation. The tidal power plant developed by Minesto, called Deep Green, is a novel technology using a ‘flying’ kite with an attached turbine, moving at a speed several times higher than the mean flow. Multiple Deep Green power plants will eventually form arrays, which require knowledge of both flow interactions between individual devices and how the array influences the surrounding environment. The present study uses large eddy simulations (LES) and an actuator line model (ALM) to analyze the oscillating turbulent boundary layer flow in tidal currents without and with a Deep Green power plant. We present the modeling technique and preliminary results so far.
Highlights
There are several new technologies emerging for extracting power from tidal currents
Initial studies show that the tidal flow is a strongly forced accelerating current, and that the turbulence fields are not close to be in a quasi-stationary state with the mean flow, but rather depends on the phase in the tidal cycles
The present study is divided in three steps: 1. Full tidal cycle large eddy simulations (LES) to both give information of the free turbulence characteristics and to produce initial conditions for precursor simulations
Summary
There are several new technologies emerging for extracting power from tidal currents. They span from turbines mounted on the bottom to devices that operates in mid-depth or at the surface [1]. The fact that the power plants will be mounted in regions with strong tidal currents implies that robust design of the equipment becomes an important issue. There are some studies that have targeted the turbulence characteristics of tidal currents [2,3,4]. There are some studies focusing on how bottom mounted turbines operate in a tidal flow [5,6,7]. The main part of the studies have focused on turbulence intensity and length scale of the turbulent eddies, but other quantities such as structure functions, probability density functions, intermittency, coherent turbulence kinetic energy, anisotropy invariants, and a scalar measure of anisotropy to characterize the turbulence have been suggested as well [8]
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