Performance and wake characteristics of tidal turbines in an infinitely large array

DOI10.1017/JFM.2021.692zbMATH Open1496.76070arXiv2101.03829OpenAlexW3119734868MaRDI QIDQ5152964FDOQ5152964

Authors: Pablo Ouro, Takafumi Nishino 

Publication date: 28 September 2021

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The efficiency of tidal-stream turbines in a large array depends on the balance between negative effects of turbine-wake interactions and positive effects of bypass-flow acceleration due to local blockage, both of which are functions of the layout of turbines. Here we investigate the hydrodynamics of turbines in an infinitely large array with aligned or staggered layouts for a range of streamwise and lateral turbine spacing. First, we present a theoretical analysis based on an extension of the Linear Momentum Actuator Disc Theory (LMADT) for perfectly aligned and staggered layouts, employing a hybrid inviscid-viscous approach to account for the local blockage effect within each turbine row and the viscous (turbulent) wake mixing behind each row in a coupled manner. We perform Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) of open-channel flow for 28 layouts of tidal turbines using an Actuator-Line Method with periodic boundary conditions. Both theoretical and LES results show that the efficiency of turbines (or the power of turbines for a given bulk velocity) in an aligned array decreases as we reduce the streamwise spacing, whereas that in a staggered array remains high and may even increase due to the positive local blockage effect (causing the local flow velocity upstream of each turbine to exceed the bulk velocity) if the lateral turbine spacing is sufficiently small. The LES results further reveal that the amplitude of wake meandering tends to decrease as we reduce the lateral spacing, which leads to a lower wake recovery rate in the near-wake region. These results will help to understand and improve the efficiency of tidal turbines in future large arrays, even though the performance of real tidal arrays may depend not only on turbine-to-turbine interactions but also on macro-scale interactions between the array and natural tidal currents, the latter of which are outside the scope of this study.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.03829

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zbMATH Keywords

large eddy simulationcoastal engineeringhybrid inviscid-viscous approachlinear momentum actuator disc theoryturbine-wake interactionviscous wake mixing

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Shear flows and turbulence (76F10) Turbulent transport, mixing (76F25) Direct numerical and large eddy simulation of turbulence (76F65) Hydrology, hydrography, oceanography (86A05)

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Cited In (8)

• Single and multi-row turbine performance in bounded shear flow
• On the arrangement of tidal turbines in rough and oscillatory channel flow
• Unsteady vortex shedding dynamics behind a circular cylinder in very shallow free-surface flows
• Two-scale dynamics of flow past a partial cross-stream array of tidal turbines
• Power extraction by a water turbine in inviscid free surface flow with vertical shear
• Hydrodynamics and tidal turbine generator stability analysis in several wave variations
• Two-scale interaction of wake and blockage effects in large wind farms
• The efficiency of an array of tidal turbines partially blocking a wide channel

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