Performance Analysis of a savonius type direct drive turbine for wave energy conversion

  • Published : 2010.06.17

Abstract

Although oscillating water column type wave energy devices are nearing the stage of commercial exploitation, there is still much to be learnt about many facets of their hydrodynamic performance. The techniques of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are applied to simulate a wave energy conversion device in free surface such as waves. This research uses the commercially available ANSYS CFX computational fluid dynamics flow solver to model a complete oscillating water column system with savonius turbine incorporated at the rear bottom of the OWC chamber in a three dimensional numerical wave tank. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of an average wave condition on the performance and internal flow of a newly developed direct drive turbine (DDT) model for wave energy conversion numerically. The effects of blade angle and front lip shape on the hydrodynamic efficiency are investigated. The results indicated that the developed models are suitable to analyze the water flow characteristics both in the chamber and in the turbine. For the turbine, the numerical results of torque were compared for the all cases. The results of the testing have also illustrated that simple changes to the front wall aperture shape can provide marked improvements in the efficiency of energy capture for OWC type devices.

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