• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2016

Tidal farm is a multi-arrayed turbine system for utilizing tidal stream energy. For horizontal-axis turbine(HAT) system, it is recommended that each unit has to be deployed far apart in order to avoid hydrodynamic interference among turbines, as proposed by the European Marine Energy Centre(EMEC). But there is no rule for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbine(VAT) yet. Moreover it has been reported that a proper arrangement of adjacent turbines can enhance the overall efficiency even greater than an arrangement without mutual interference effect. This paper suggests the layout of VATs showing the better performances, which turned out to be quite different from HATs' arrangement. Numerical calculations were performed to investigate the performance variation in terms of the rotational direction as well as the distance between turbines. It has been shown that the best combination of rotational direction and distance between turbines can increase its performance higher about 9.2% than that of two independently operated turbines. It is likely that such improvement is due to the increased velocity between adjacent turbines. For diagonally arranged turbines, the maximum normalized mean power coefficient was obtained to be higher about 5.6% than that of two independent turbines. It is expected that the present results can be utilized for conceptual design of tidal farm to harness the tidal stream energy.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2009

A numerical investigation was performed based on the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS) equations for the two-dimensional unsteady flow around a vertical axis turbine(VAT) with three or four blades. VAT is one of the promising devices for tidal current energy conversion. The geometry of the turbine blade was $NACA65_3$-018 airfoil, for which CFD analysis using Fluent was carried out at several angles of attack and the results were compared with the corresponding experimental data for validation and calibration. Then CFD simulations were carried out for the whole vertical axis turbine with a two-dimensional setup. The CFD simulation demonstrated the usefulness of the method to study the typical unsteady flows around VATs and the results showed that the optimum turbine efficiency could be achieved for carefully selected combinations of the number of blade and Tip-Speed Ratio(TSR).

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 2013

Hydrodynamic aspects on three-dimensional effects were investigated in this study for simple and convenient conversion of tidal stream energy using a Vertical-Axis Turbine (VAT). Numerical approach was made to reveal the differences of flow physics between 2-D estimation and rigorous 3-D simulation. It was shown that the 3-D effects were dominant mainly due to the variation of tip vortices around the tip region of rotor blade, causing the loss of lift for steadily translating hydrofoil and the reduction of torque for rotating turbine blade. The 3-D effect was found to be rather prominent for the typical VATs considered in this paper. Simple and yet efficient 2-D approach with the correction of its three-dimensionality was also proposed for practical design and analysis of VAT.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.241-248
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• 2010

This paper deals with the performance analysis and design of the Darrieus-type vertical axis turbine to evaluate the effect of key design parameters such as number of blade, blade chord, pitch and camber. The commercial CFD software FLUENT was employed as an unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver with k-e turbulent model. Grid system was modelled by GAMBIT. Basic numerical methodology of the present study is appeared in Jung et al. (2009). Two-dimensional analysis was mostly adopted to avoid the barrier of massive calculation required for parametric study. It was found that the highly efficient turbine model could be designed through the optimization of design parametrrs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.142-149
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• 2012

This study deals with the investigation of the scale effect for the vertical-axis tidal stream turbine by evaluating the hydrodynamic efficiency of turbine rotors of different diameters at different flow conditions. Numerical analyses are made for the turbine rotors with a same shape, but different sizes obtained using the diameter evaluation equation suggested in this paper. It is shown that the performance of turbine is clearly dependent upon the rotor size and inflow velocity, i.e. Reynolds number dependency of different-scaled turbines showing better efficiency with increasing Reynolds number. The sudden decrease of efficiency is also noticed around the transition region of Reynolds number. The hydrodynamic capacity evaluation method needed at initial stage of turbine design is suggested and exercised with some test cases. It is recommended that the method is expected to be useful for turbines with demanding powers between 10 kW and 300 kW.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2012.04a
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• pp.336-341
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• 2012

The vertical-axis tidal current turbine (VAT) consisting of blades, struts to support blades, shaft, generator and so forth requires anti-resonance design against fluid fluctuation forces generated on blades to ensure its stable operation. In this study, a free vibration analysis program based on the finite element method is developed for efficient anti-resonance design of VAT in the preliminary design stage. In the finite element modeling, the VAT structure components are regarded as beam elements. Added masses due to the fluid and structure interaction of VAT evaluated by empirical formulas are considered as lumped mass elements. In addition, input parameters required for the analysis can be automatically prepared from the principal dimensions of VAT to make anti-resonance design more convenient. The validity of applied methods is verified by the comparison of the numerical results obtained from MSC/Nastran and the developed program for two VAT models.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.274-281
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• 2015

Thermal and nuclear power plants on shore commonly use the sea water for cooling facility. Discharged cooling water has the high kinematic energy potential due to amount of water flux. Numerical analysis was made to find the suitable combinations between the arrangement of tidal turbines and the overall dimensions of the discharged channel. Several parameters such as the turbine diameter to inlet size, and the axial distance to turbine size were investigated. Power coefficients for various test conditions were also compared to see the effect of inlet configurations such as single inlet and dual inlet. For the single inlet, the mean power coefficient appeared to be gradually decreased with increasing distance, and the maximum power was obtained when the turbine diameter was same as the inlet diameter. For the dual inlet, the tendency was similar so that the better result when the turbine diameter was same as the inlet diameter. It is expected that the present methodology can be extensively utilized to harness the high kinetic energy flow of the discharge channel of power plant.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.151-159
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• 2020

This study aimed to investigate the performance characteristics of vertical axis turbine of tidal energy convertor. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equation with shear stress transport turbulence model has been solved to analyze the fluid flow of the vertical axis turbine. The hexahedral grids have been used to construct the computational domain and the grid dependency test has been performed to find the optimum grid system. Four steps have been carried out to design the vertical axis turbine of the 100 kW class tidal energy convertor.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2012

As the problems of global warming are brought up recently, many skillful solutions for developing new renewable energy are suggested. One of the most remarkable things is ocean energy. Korea has abundant ocean energy resources owing to geographical characteristics surrounded by sea on three sides, thus the technology of commercialization about tidal current power, wave power is demanded. Especially, Tidal energy conversion system is a means of maintaining environment naturally. Tidal current generation is a form to produce electricity by installing rotors, generators to convert a horizontal flow generated by tidal current into rotating movement. According to rotor direction, a tidal current turbine is largely distinguished between horizontal and vertical axis shape. Power capacity depends on the section size crossing a rotor and tidal current speed. We therefore investigated three dimensional flow analysis and performance evaluation using commercial ANSYS-CFX code for an 100 kW class horizontal axis turbine for low water level. Then We also studied three dimensional flow characteristics of a rotating rotor and blade surface streamlines around a rotor. As a result, We found that torque increased with TSR, the maximum torque occurred at TSR 3.77 and torque decreased even though TSR increased. Moreover we could get power coefficient 0.38 at designed flow velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.114-120
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• 2011

The characteristics of a helical turbine to be used for tidal stream energy conversion have been numerically studied with varying a few design parameters. The helical turbines were proposed aiming at mitgating the well known poor cut-in characteristics and the structural vibration caused by the fluctuating torque, and the basic concept is introducing some twisting angle of the vertical blade along the rotation axis of the turbine. Among many potential controling parameters, we focused, in this paper, on the twisting angle and the height to diameter ratio of the turbine, and, based on the numerical experiment, We tried to propose a configuration of such turbine for which better performance can be expected. The three-dimensional unsteady RANS equations were solved by using the commercial CFD software, FLUENT with k-${\omega}$ SST turbulence model, and the grid was generated by GAMBIT. It is shown that there are a range of the twisting angle producing better efficiency with less vibration and the minimum height to diameter ratio above which the efficiency does not improve considerably.