Non-Linear Modeling of Ocean Current Turbine Blades Under Large Deflection

Abstract

This paper presents a non-linear modeling approach for large-scale ocean current turbine (OCT) blades. During the operation, OCT blades are subjected to a hydrodynamic load that has fluid density 800 times higher than that of air. The fluid load on OCT blades are sufficient to cause large deflection; therefore, a method that couples the blade’s deflection and the hydrodynamic load is required. For this purpose, we developed a non-linear model for turbine blades based on blade element momentum (BEM) theory. The newly developed method considers interplay between blade’s deflection and the hydrodynamic load. In addition, geometric non-linearity is also considered in the analysis, which provides a more accurate prediction of the structural response. For validation purposes, the developed method and a set of existing National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) codes were used to calculate the deflection of the OCT blade. A comparison of flap-wise and edge-wise deflections given by both methods were determined and the results showed a good correlation between the two methods. This comparison was made only for small deflection since NREL codes cannot account for large deflection. In the next step, to investigate the effect of non-linearity, both linear and non-linear analyses were performed for a large-scale OCT blade where deflection was indeed large. In this study, we analyzed a flexible blade made of E-glass/epoxy composite. The difference in deflection was about 11% for the flexible blade since the fluid-structure interaction was significant as the blade deflection was large.