• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.541-549
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• 2014

Horizontal axis tidal turbines are machinery inherited from the principle of wind turbines to enable the application of utilizing ocean's current energy. Its function does not differ from that of wind case, which is to convert fluid's kinetics energy to mechanical torque, therefore generates electricity. Since the ocean has been an enormous source of untapped power, tidal turbines have been being investigated recently to meet human's demand of energy with respect to environment friendly approach. This paper introduces a couple of turbine designs which are anticipated to have high performance. A comparison among recent works on the same topic is also made for validation.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.366-372
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• 2015

Ocean energy is one of the most promising renewable energy resources. In particular, South Korea is one of the countries where it is economically and technically feasible to develop tidal current power plants to use tidal current energy. In this study, based on the design code for HARP_Opt (Horizontal axis rotor performance optimizer) developed by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) in the United States, and applying the BEMT (Blade element momentum theory) and GA (Genetic algorithm), the optimal shape design and performance evaluation of the horizontal axis rotor for a 200-kW-class tidal current turbine were performed using different numbers of blades (two or three) and a pitch control method (variable pitch or fixed pitch). As a result, the VSFP (Variable Speed Fixed Pitch) turbine with three blades showed the best performance. However, the performances of four different cases did not show significant differences. Hence, it is necessary when selecting the final design to consider the structural integrity related to the fatigue, along with the economic feasibility of manufacturing the blades.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.164-168
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• 2013

Tidal-current power is now recognized as a clean power resource. The turbine blade is the fundamental component of a tidal current power turbine. The kinetic energy available within a tidal current can be converted into rotational power by turbine blades. While in service, turbine blades are generally subjected to cyclic fatigue loading due to their rotation and the rotor-tower interaction. Predicting the fatigue life under a hydrodynamic fatigue load is very important to prevent blade failure while in service. To predict the fatigue life, hydrodynamic load data should be acquired. In this study, the vibration characteristics were analyzed based on three-dimensional unsteady simulations to obtain the cyclic fatigue load. Our results can be applied to the fatigue design of horizontal-axis tidal turbines.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.159.2-159.2
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• 2011

Hyundai Heavy Industries has developed a tidal current energy converter utilizing the accumulated technology as the world largest constructor for ship and offshore structures. The model has two sets of turbines in both ends in order to utilize the bi-directional current flows in flood and ebb tide. The torque produced by turbine in tidal current is directly delivered to generator along the horizontal axis, in which the turbine, gear, generator, gear and turbine are connected successively. The manufactured model for field test has the turbine diameter of 5 meters to produce the maximum power of 500kW at maximum current speed of 5m/s. The technical verification of tidal power converter was performed by means of small scale model test in towing tank as well as field test at the Strait of Uldolmok located in Jindo of Jeollanamdo province. Field test was performed by mounting the tidal current converter on the SEP(Self Elevating Platform) which could lower the 4 vertical legs on the seabed and could elevate platform over the water surface using the hydraulic power for itself. The field test performed for a month shows that power output is similar or larger compared with the expected one in design stage. This paper presents the development of tidal current energy converter and real sea field test by Hyundai Heavy Industries. This project has finished successfully and provided the technical advance toward commercial services for tidal current power generation in the south-west region in Korea.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.241-255
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• 2012

Three types of 100 kW-class tidal stream turbines are proposed and their performance is studied both numerically and experimentally. Following a wind turbine design procedure, a base blade is derived and two additional blades are newly designed focusing more on efficiency and cavitation. For the three designed turbines, a CFD is performed by using FLUENT. The calculations predict that the newly designed turbines perform better than the base turbine and the tip vortex can be reduced with additional efficiency increase by adopting a tip rake. The performance of the turbines is tested in a towing tank with 700 mm models. The scale problem is carefully investigated and the measurements are compared with the CFD results. All the prediction from the CFD is supported by the model experiment with some quantitative discrepancy. The maximum efficiencies are 0.49 (CFD) and 0.45 (experiment) at TSR 5.17 for the turbine with a tip rake.

• 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 Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.733-742
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• 2013

The Korea has significant tidal current energy resources, but it is so hard to work underwater for tidal turbine installation. Therefore commercial diving work is very important for tidal current generator. Also, Jangjuk channel is vary famous as proper area to generate tidal current energy. Nevertheless, no one is studied about characteristics of commercial diving works with installation of tidal current generator. The purpose of this study is to introduce commercial diving with work types and investigate critical limits of diving working under the conditions, which are working only to minutes at slack tide during the neap tide. As the results, work types are five as like mooring installation, OMAS(Offshore Maintenance Access System), support structure installation, cable and turbine installation. Here, the original construction period is expected about 4 months, but the construction take 18 months to complete. The cause of extends construction period is insufficiency of researching tidal current conditions at the site and ignorance of slack tide which need to secure diving working time. Total diving working times are 110th during 18 months, the highest percentage of diving times is turbine installation about 43.6 %, and cable, mooring installation and support structure construction are 27.3 %, 15.5 %, 13.6 %, respectively. On the basis of this study, estimation of times of commercial diving is possible with work types of tidal current power, and has a significance as basic data to determining construction period.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.230-238
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• 2011

The experimental study for the performances of 100 kW marine current turbines (Horizontal Axis Turbine) has been conducted with three cases of 700 mm diameter model in PNU 100 m towing tank. Three cases of impeller have been designed according to the variation of section configuration and tip shape. The model tests have been carried out at different speed of revolution to find out the scale effect (Reynolds number effect). The designed rake impeller was the best among them in the efficiency point of view especially at high Tip Speed Ratio (TSR). The present study is expected to be extended to conduct at high reynolds number as well as the computational study for the validation.