Design and hydrodynamic performance of a horizontal axis hydrokinetic turbine

Abstract

Marine energy is gaining more and more interest in recent years and, in comparison to fossil energy, is very attractive due to predictable energy output, renewable and sustainable, the Horizontal Axis Hydrokinetic Turbine (HAHT) is one of the most innovative energy systems that allow transforms the kinetic energy into electricity. This work presents a new series of hydrofoil sections, named here NTSXX20, and was designed to work at different turbine functioning requirement. These hydrofoils have excellent hydrodynamic characteristics at the operating Reynolds number. The design of the turbine has been done utilising XFLR5 code and QBlade which is a Blade-Element Momentum solver with a blade design feature. Tidal current turbine has been able to capture about 50% from TSR range of 5 to 9 with maximum CPower of 51 % at TSR=6,5. The hydrodynamics performance for the CFD cases was presented and was employed to explain the complete response of the turbine.