Numerical simulation of the wake of marine current turbines with a particle method

This paper presents numerical computations of three bladed horizontal axis marine current turbines in a uniform free upstream current. The unsteady evolution of the turbine wake is taken into account by some three-dimensional software, developed to assess the disturbances generated in the sea. An unsteady Lagrangian method is considered for these computations using "Vortex Method": a velocity-vorticity numerical implementation of the Navier-Stokes equations. The vortex flow is discretised with particles carrying vorticity, which are advected in a Lagrangian frame. The present paper aims at presenting results on both power and thrust coefficient (C-p and C-T) predictions and wake characterisation, up to ten diameters downstream of the turbine. Moreover, two different marine current turbines configurations are considered: one is taken from literature [1] and the second one is an open-modified version of turbine inspired from previous works [2]. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.