The influence of tidal turbine arrangement on the wake interaction in shallow water

Abstract

The arrangement of tidal turbines in the tidal farm is known to be complicated due to the resistance to the tidal flow which causes the flow to be channeled around the individual devices. To successfully implement the tidal turbine, the wake interaction between the device and its implication needs to be fully understood. Typically, the wake interaction in the array depends on the arrangement and spacing between the device in the array. In this study, a numerical analysis is conducted through the use of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) approach to investigate the influence of the array setup in shallow water application and to propose a suitable array layout for possible application in Malaysia. The numerical analysis is carried out with 2 combination sets of lateral and longitudinal spacing covering 15 turbines in staggered and squared array layout. Hypothetical ‘actuator’ disk and ‘actuator’ cylinder model are used to represent the Horizontal axis turbine (HATT) and Vertical axis turbine (VATT) respectively. The results showed that the VATT model has faster wake recovery and obeys the definition of the far wake. Staggered arrays with bigger spacing are preferable for application in shallow water due to the low probability of wake merging between the rows.