• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.151-158
• /
• 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
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.9-14
• /
• 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
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.142-149
• /
• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.241-248
• /
• 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
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.61-70
• /
• 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.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.06a
• /
• pp.620-623
• /
• 2009

여러 해양에너지 중 유체의 빠른 흐름을 이용하는 조류발전은 서해안과 남해안에 적용하기에 적합하며 해양환경의 영향을 최소화 하면서 많은 에너지를 연속적으로 생산할 수 있는 장점이 있다. 조류발전에서 1차적으로 에너지를 변환시키는 로터는 조류발전시스템의 주요한 장치중의 하나로 여러 변수에 의해 그 성능이 결정된다. 블래이드 수, 형상, 단면적, 허브, 직경 등 여러 요소를 고려하여 로터를 설계하며, 설계정보와 실험데이터를 바탕으로 수치모델을 구현하여 실험에서 직접 계측할 수 없는 로터 주변의 유체현상 및 간섭영향 등을 예측할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 변화하는 유속에 따른 HAT 로터의 시동속도, 회전수를 측정하여 로터 형상과 허브-직경비가 다른 로터의 성능을 고찰하고, 이를 수치모델로 구현하여 로터주변 유동변화를 연구하였다.

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

• New & Renewable Energy
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.92-100
• /
• 2011

With the increased demand of clean energy and global warming measures, the renewable energy development has been increased recently. The TCP (Tidal Current Power) is one of the ocean renewable energy sources. Having the high tidal energy source in Korea, there are many potential TCP sites with strong current speed. The rotor, which initially converts the energy, is a very important component because it affects the efficiency of the entire system. The rotor performance is determined by various design parameters including number of blades, shape, sectional size, diameters and etc. However, the interactions between devices also contribute significantly to the energy production. The rotor performance considering the interaction needs to be investigated to predict the exact power in the farm. This paper introduces the optimum design of TCP turbine and the performance of devices considering the interference between rotors.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.73-78
• /
• 2013

CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analyses that considered the dynamic interaction effects between the flow and a turbine were performed to evaluate the power output characteristics of two representative vertical-axis tidal-current turbines: an H-type Darrieus turbine and Gorlov helical turbine (GHT). For this purpose, a commercial CFD code, Star-CCM+, was utilized, and the power output characteristic were investigated in relation to the scale ratio using the relation between the Reynolds number and the lift-to-drag ratio. It was found that the power coefficients were significantly reduced when the scaled model turbine was used, especially when the Reynolds number was lower than $10^5$. The power output characteristics of GHT in relation to the twisting angle were also investigated using a three-dimensional CFD analysis, and it was found that the power coefficient was maximized for the case of a Darrieus turbine, i.e., a twisting angle of $0^{\circ}$, and the torque pulsation ratio was minimized when the blade covered $360^{\circ}$ for the case of a turbine with a twisting angle of $120^{\circ}$.

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