The Research Of The Rectangular Tidal Turbine

In March2011, Fukushima nuclear power plants and nuclear explosion leakage which iscaused by Japanese earthquake proofs that the potential risks of nuclear energy. Developmentand utilization of new green energy and renewable energy has become the top priority whichmaintains the sustainable energy development. China is one of the richest countries that havelarge amounts of ocean currents resources, so designing new energy conversion devices hasvery important theoretical significance and application value.As we known that the tidal current is two-way reciprocating motion. Common horizontalaxis tidal generating device is only suitable for the front-flow mode. The energy conversionefficiency is very low while it is working under the back-flow mode, so it requires to beequipped with convection or pitch controlling device and it costs too much. The Darrieus-typevertical axis turbine has a good direction of the adaptability to inflow, and the energyconversion efficiency is not affected by the direction of the flow, however, the energyconversion efficiency is low. In order to overcome the above two deficiencies of the device,combined with the motion law of the tidal current, has designed a kind of new tidal currentpower conversion device—The Rectangular Tidal Current Turbine.In this paper, the CFD software “FLUENT” is used to do the research to thehydrodynamic performance of the rectangular tidal turbine and all the above is based on thebasic principles of fluid mechanics. Taking account of the configuration of computationequipment, large amount of calculation, time wasting and other realistic problems, thethree-dimensional solid model is simplified into the two-dimensional computational model todiscuss the rectangular tidal turbine flow field numerical methods, the simulation results hasidentified a number of key parameters on the effects of turbine performance and reflected thework operation mode of the tidal turbine as well. At April,2011, produced the model ofrectangular tidal current turbine and made a model experiment in Harbin EngineeringUniversity circulating water tank laboratory and got some unexpected results.The results show that, rectangular tidal current turbine has good characteristics that itrotates unidirectionally while the flow comes from two-way direction, and it could adapt toperiodic reciprocating motion rules of current well. Not only its shaft steering hasunidirectional rotation but also has the same ability to capture the energy although under the working mode of the back-flow or the front-flow without “yaw controlling”. In addition, ithas a higher ability to capture energy and is very suitable to the tidal current energyconversion of low water head and large flow. It has wide application prospects in China’s tidalcurrent energy development and utilization.