Experimental study on interaction effect of darrieus tidal stream turbines

Abstract

There have been various approaches for efficiency improvement of a Darrieus tidal stream turbine after it was introduced as an alternative of horizontal axis turbines. Among the approaches, the researches on the interaction effect of dual configuration were conducted. In this study, a dual Darrieus turbine with a coupling mechanism was proposed for investigating the interaction effect. Also, the effect of bi-directional tidal stream was analyzed with prototype fabrication, apparatus set-up and experiment conduction in indoor and offshore facilities. As the results of the experiments, the dual turbine in case of counter-rotation and inflow between the turbines improved efficiencies by 9.5% and 11.31%, respectively, as compared to the single turbine. Also, the dual turbine in case of the inflow improved efficiencies by 9.4% and 16.62%, respectively, as compared to that in case of outflow between the turbines which represented the case of 180 degrees change of flow direction after slack water. Therefore, the proposed dual turbine showed the advantage in terms of the efficiency as compared to the single turbine and the effect level of the slack water on the performance of the dual turbine was investigated. © 2019, Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute. All rights reserved.