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Axial-flow hydrokinetic turbine array: Optimization and performance prediction
Date Issued
01-01-2019
Author(s)
Sharma, L.
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Abstract
Hydrokinetic Turbine (HKT) systems extract energy from marine currents and offer renewable technology for supplementing the energy requirements with no significant adverse effect on the environment or the habitat. However, the power output of an axial flow HKT is lower than the conventional hydraulic turbines. Hence, instead of deploying a single turbine, identical turbines may be coupled together in an array. This demands a further development in extracting maximum power available under practical conditions. In the present work three different array configurations, rectangular, equilateral triangle and isosceles triangle configurations, are discussed and the optimized configurations are taken up for further analysis. Flow velocity profiles are used to demonstrate the effect of each configuration on velocity distribution and its relation with the resultant performance of the turbine arrays. The performance of single and array of turbines are analyzed in the proximity of free surface and equilateral triangular pattern (Array 2) is found to be the best.