Performance improvement in kinetic energy converters though fluid separation
- Homepage
- http://www.energy.soton.ac.uk/
- Started
- 3rd October 2010
- Ending
- 30th November 2012
- Research Team
- Tom Blackmore, Luke Blunden
- Investigators
- William Batten
The use of flow separation to generate low back pressure behind an energy extractors to improve performance has previous been demonstrated for wind turbines. To date no comprehensive theoretical theory has been validated although there are several attempts. Generally, it has not been thought cost effective for wind turbines due to the size of the structure unless it can be integrated into a building. Within a tidal farm of turbines the flow around an individual turbine is also bounded causing local flow acceleration between turbines, the free surface and the sea bed. These blockage effects have the possibility to further enhance flow separation improving the performance of the turbine. The work plans to develop suitable geometries for producing flow separation and study the influence of flow blockage on a tidal turbine performance through experiments and simulations
Categories
Physical Systems and Engineering simulation: CFD, Marine Renewable Energy, Turbulence
Simulation software: OpenFOAM
Programming languages and libraries: C++
Computational platforms: Iridis