Simulating Collisions for Hydrokinetic Turbines

Abstract

Evaluations of blade-strike on an axial-flow Marine Hydrokinetic turbine were conducted using a conventional methodology as well as an alternative modeling approach proposed in the present document. The proposed methodology integrates the following components into a Computa- tional Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model: (i) advanced eddy-resolving flow simulations, (ii) ambient turbulence based on field data, (iii) moving turbine blades in highly transient flows, and (iv) Lagrangian particles to mimic the potential fish pathways. The sensitivity of blade-strike prob- ability to the following conditions was also evaluated: (i) to the turbulent environment, (ii) to fish size and (iii) to mean stream flow velocity. The proposed methodology provided fraction of collisions and offered the capability of analyzing the causal relationships between the flow envi- ronment and resulting strikes on rotating blades. Overall, the conventional methodology largely overestimates the probability of strike, and lacks the ability to produce potential fish and aquatic biota trajectories as they interact with the rotating turbine. By using a set of experimental corre- lations of exposure-response of living fish colliding on moving blades, the occurrence, frequency and intensity of the particle collisions was next used to calculate the survival rate of fish crossing the MHK turbine. This step indicatedmore » survival rates always greater than 98%. Although the proposed CFD framework is computationally more expensive, it provides the advantage of evaluating multiple mechanisms of stress and injury of hydrokinetic turbine devices on fish.« less