Research On Hydrodynamics Of Marine Current Turbine's Hydrofoil Blades Based On Lattice Boltzmann Method

The power coefficient of marine current turbines is determined by the structure of the turbines. As the basic research work of the optimization of marine current turbines, hydrodynamics analysis of hydrofoil blades is an important way to optimize the parameters and structures in order to improve the power coefficient of marine current turbines. But currently the research of hydrodynamics analysis on marine current turbine's hydrofoil blades is still very little as the marine current power generation equipment is still in testing stage.Gradually developed in recent years, lattice Boltzmann method has drawn much attention and become an important mesoscale simulation method for complex fluid modeling and simulation. It has the advantages of simple algorithm, high accuracy, direct calculation for the pressure, suitable for complex boundary conditions and parallel computations. After more than 20 years of development, many calculation models were proposed and verified which gradually established and completed the theory. Nowadays, it has achieved great success in many fluid dynamics applications and has became an important numerical simulation method in the field of computational fluid dynamics.In this paper, lattice Boltzmann method is adopted to the application research on hydrodynamics analysis of marine current turbine's hydrofoil blades. Through numerical simulation and comparative analysis, it is proved that the lattice Boltzmann method is feasible and effective to this research field. By simulating flow around hydrofoil under the conditions of different attack angles, different hydrofoil blades, and different Reynolds numbers, processing and analyzing the calculation data to draw the corresponding streamlines and hydrodynamic curves, the trend of hydrodynamics parameters in different hydrofoil conditions is summarized and a basic optimization method of hydrofoil hydrodynamic characteristics is proposed which provides a guideline to the optimization design of marine current power generation turbines. Based on the above work, a real-time computing software of simulating and analyzing the hydrodynamics of marine current turbine's hydrofoil blades is developed through compiling and improving the calculation program which provide convenience to the simulation of hydrofoil blades. Besides, a way of improving the power coefficient of marine current turbines using channeling devices is studied based on lattice Boltzmann method and a measure of increasing the velocity ratio of channeling devices is obtained through simulation and analysis of channeling devices with different profiles and assemble gaps which provide a theoretical basis to the improvement of marine current turbine's power coefficient. Furthermore, deriving the units conversion between physical unit and lattice unit in lattice Boltzmann simulations through dimensionless transformation, the unit conversion formulations is achieved. The research work in this paper establishes the foundation for the following research work, provides some reference and guidance information, makes some extension in the corresponding research field.