CFD Analysis of Stall in a Wells Turbine

The Wells turbine is a self-rectifying device that employs a symmetrical blade profile, and is often used in conjunction with an oscillating water column to extract energy from ocean waves. The effects of solidity, angle of attack, blade shape and many other parameters have been widely studied both numerically and experimentally. To date, several 3-D numerical simulations have been performed using commercial software, mostly with steady flow conditions and employing various two-equation turbulence models. In this paper, the open source code Open-FOAM is used to numerically study the performance characteristics of a Wells turbine using a two-equation turbulence model, namely the Menter SST model, in conjunction with a transient fluid solver.