Numerical simulation of the wake of marine current turbines with a particle method

This paper presents numerical computations of three bladed horizontal axis marine current turbines in a uniform free upstream current. The unsteady evolution of the turbine wake is taken into account by some three-dimensional software, developed to assess the disturbances generated in the sea. An unsteady Lagrangian method is considered for these computations using ”Vortex Method”; a velocity-vorticity numerical implementation of the Navier–Stokes equations. The vortex flow is discretised with particles carrying vorticity, which are advected in a Lagrangian frame. The present paper aims at presenting results on both power and thrust coefficient (CP and CT) predictions and wake characterisation, up to ten diameters downstream of the turbine. Moreover, two different marine current turbines configurations are considered: one is taken from literature [1] and the second one is an open-modified version of turbine inspired from previous works [2].

► We developed a numerical software for the computation of marine current turbine. ► We used an unsteady Lagrangian implementation of the Navier-Stokes equations. ► Two different turbines are considered, one of them is taken from the literature [1]. ► Both power/thrust coefficients and wake are computed with the same numerical tool. ► All the numerical results are compared to experiments