Numerical and Experimental Investigations on the Hydrodynamic Performance of a Tidal Current Turbine

In this paper, numerical and experimental investigations are presented on the hydrodynamic performance of a horizontal tidal current turbine (TCT) designed and made by our Dalian University of Technology (DUT) research group. Thus, it is given the acronym: DUTTCT. An open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver, called pimpledymfoam, is employed to perform numerical simulations for design analysis, while experimental tests are conducted in a DUT towing tank. The important factors, including self-starting velocity, tip speed ratio (TSR), and yaw angle, which play important roles in the turbine output power, are studied in the investigations. Results obtained show that the maximum power efficiency of the newly developed turbine (DUTTCT) could reach up to 47.6%, and all its power efficiency is over 40% in the TSR range from 3.5 to 6; the self-starting velocity of DUTTCT is about 0.745 m/s; and the yaw angle has negligible influence on its efficiency as it is less than 10 deg.