Volume 26: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part I

Open Centre Turbines: From the Wake Analysis to The Array Design Giacomo Lo Zupone, Changjun Liu, Jinyue Yan, Bin Liang

Abstract

The open centre turbine can be easily installed with a kite-like mooring system. It is promising to harvest the renewable marine resources due to its higher energy conversion efficiency, lower cost, and minimum impacts on the submarine environment. However, multi-devices deployment is still a great challenge due to the interaction between the mutual wakes. This work deals with the wake morphology and the multi-device configuration by applying the Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis. A fully resolved model reveals that most of the turbulence affects the wake within 2D axial distance (twice the turbine diameter), with a maximum radial amplitude of 1.6R. In the axial direction, after 2D, due to an induced “suction effect” by the annular geometry, the wake takes a cylindrical shape. For a 2 turbines array, a wheelbase of 2.5D and an interplane of 5D allow keeping the devices’ performances constant.

Keywords open centre turbine, wake phenomena, tidal, multi-device farm, tidal turbine farm