초록
Due to a high tidal range of up to 10 m on the west coast of Korea, numerous tidal current projects are being planned and constructed. The turbine, which initially converts the tidal energy, is an important component because it affects the efficiency of the entire system. Its performance is determined by design variables such as the number of blades, the shape of foils, and the size of a hub. To design a turbine that can extract the maximum power on the site, the depth and duration of current velocity with respect to direction should be considered. Verifying the performance of a designed turbine is important, and requires a circulating water channel (CWC) facility. A physical model for the performance test of the turbine should be carefully designed and compared to results from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. In this study, a horizontal axis tidal current turbine is designed based on the blade element theory. The proposed turbine's performance is evaluated using both CFD and a CWC experiment. The sealing system, power train, measuring devices, and generator are arranged in a nacelle, and the complete TCP system is demonstrated in a laboratory scale.
