Performance simulation of water turbines by using 6-DoF UDF and sliding mesh methods

Abstract

In this work, the differences between the six degrees of freedom (6-DoF) method and the sliding mesh approach in computational fluid dynamics simulations of an Archimedes screw turbine for hydrokinetic applications were studied using ANSYs Fluent software. The numerical curves obtained by representing the power coefficient (Cp) values versus the tip speed ratio (TSR or λ) were compared based on experimental data. Both methods allowed to simulate the rotor rotation; although the 6-DoF method was more accurate in the prediction of the turbine performance, higher computational resources were consumed in comparison with the sliding mesh method, which allows to obtain a computational solution in affordable times.