Numerical Simulation of the Deflection of Jellyfish due to Air Bubble Curtains

Abstract

Abstract Increased jellyfish blooms have gained more attention recently due to their tendency to clog seawater intake systems of nuclear power plant cooling stations and threaten marine fish farms. The Bubble Tubing for Jellyfish Deflection Project (BTJD) was conducted by C-CORE to investigate the efficiency of Canadian Pond.ca’s Bubble Tubing® for jellyfish deflection. A three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model was developed to quantify air bubble curtain performance for jellyfish deflection. The commercial CFD package STAR-CCM+ was used for this purpose. The multi-phase (water and air) fluid flow dynamics were simulated by solving Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equation. The Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) approach was utilized to model the individual jellyfish behavior. The CFD model was initially used to optimize the flume tank test design, and then the model was validated using the test results from the flume tank. CFD simulations covered a range of test parameters such as current speed, number of curtains, curtain spacing, bubbler angles and air flow rates. Good agreement was observed between the CFD simulations and flume tank test results. The developed CFD model can be utilized for similar applications at field scales.