Parametric analysis of three dimensional flow models applied to tidal energy sites in Scotland

This paper presents a detailed parametric analysis on various input parameters of two different numerical models, namely Telemac3D and Delft3D, used for the simulation of tidal current flow at potential tidal energy sites in the Pentland Firth in Scotland. The motivation behind this work is to investigate the influence of the input parameters on the above 3D models, as the majority of past research has mainly focused on using the 2D depth-averaged flow models for this region. An extended description of the models setup, along with the utilised parameters is provided. The International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) tidal gauges and Acoustic Doppler and Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements are used in calibrating model output to ensure the robustness of the models. Extensive parametric study on the impact of varying drag coefficients, roughness formulae and turbulence models has been investigated and reported. The results indicate that both Telemac3D and Delft3D models are able to produce excellent comparison against measured data; however, with Delft3D, the model parameters which provided higher correlation with the measured data, are found to be different from those reported in the previous literature, which could be attributed to the choice of boundary conditions and the mesh size.