GKinetic Submersible Testing

Project Description

This turbine and deployment system consists of two vertical axis turbines positioned either side of a central bluff body. The bluff body serves as a deployment system and also acts to accelerate the flow to the turbines. Research to date has focused on optimising the turbines and this work resulted in the commercialisation of surface deployed systems which are now at TRL 7. The proposed research project will focus on a submerged version that could be deployed offshore. The work will study the shape of the bluff body and how it influences the flow to the turbines. The team propose to build three models with different shapes and carry out tests in a flume that will enable the study of hydrodynamic flows and assess the effects of different bluff body/turbine configurations. Based on previous CFD models and data collected during earlier lab and field tests, along with previous practical experiences, the team propose to design component configurations that are likely to give the best results. The team will experiment with these alternative configurations to understand how best to optimise the flow to the turbines. The resulting data will help to validate the existing CFD methodology and point the way to improvements in their approach to CFD.