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Numerical Study of Conventional and Biomimetic Marine Current Turbines in Tandem by Using Openfoam®

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2017

Y. J. Chu  and
W. T. Chong
Y. J. Chu
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical EngineeringFaculty of EngineeringUniversity of MalayaKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
W. T. Chong*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical EngineeringFaculty of EngineeringUniversity of MalayaKuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*
*Corresponding author ([email protected])
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Abstract

The increasing demands on renewable energy nowadays caused the development of marine current turbine industry. In order to improve the current design of marine current turbines, studies were conducted to analyse their hydrodynamic performances during operation. Since most of the time marine current turbines operate in arrays, it is important to understand the interactions between the turbines in order to design the optimum turbine farm. OpenFOAM® was used to simulate the turbine interactions of conventional and biomimetic marine current turbines in tandem configuration. The conventional marine current turbines were referred to Pinon et al. (2012) and Mycek et al. (2013) while the biomimetic marine current turbine was adopted from Chu (2016). The numerical simulations were conducted with turbines in different inter-device distances, A/D. The percentage differences of ‘‘efficiency’’, η between the IFREMER-LOMC and the biomimetic turbine case of inter-device distances, A/D = 4, 6, 8 and 10 are 14.3%, 6.4%, 3% and 1.92% respectively. The results show that the power produced by the biomimetic turbines in tandem is comparable with the IFREMER-LOMC turbines when A/D > 4. The biomimetic marine current turbines can be a fair choice due to their potential to have alternative fabrication method of their sheet-like turbine blades.

Keywords

BiomimeticDryobalanops aromaticaMarine current turbineCFD
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Mechanics , Volume 34 , Issue 5 , October 2018 , pp. 679 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics 2018 

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