Blade Design And Performance Analysis Of Tidal Current Energy Turbine

With the consumption of fossil energy and the increasing environmental protectionrequirements, more and more attention from many countries around the world are beingpaid to developing and utilizing the tidal current energy as a clean, rich, renewable and newenergy. As a common energy-catching device, horizontal axis tidal current energy turbinecan convert tidal current energy into its kinetic energy and drive the generator to generatepower. Thus, the blade is the most important part of the turbine. Its performance will havean effect on the turbine’s energy-catching efficiency, thus conducting the study on theblade’s design and its performance is very important. Based on the turbine modelconstructed in laboratory, the performance analysis of the airfoil used in the blade design,the design of turbine blade, and the analysis of the hydrodynamic and structural propertyfor the turbine are made via numerical simulation method and theoretical analysis in thispaper. The main works performed here are as follows.First of all, a large number of domestic and foreign relevant information is reviewed,and the latest domestic and foreign development of tidal energy developing and utilizingand some basic details of some relevant projects are introduced.Secondly, with the aim of achieving maximum energy-catching and according to thedesigning principles for of some blades, such as propeller, wind power generation device,as well as the BEM theory, the mathematical model and the basic procedures of designingtidal current energy turbine blade are given. The blade airfoils’ lift-drag performance ispredicted with the CFD method. At the same time, the influence of boundary layer mesh onthe veracity of numerical simulation results is studied as well. And the lift-drag andpressure coefficients curves, streamline and pressure distribution figures of the airfoil areobtained. These results can provide the basic data for structural designing of the blade.Then, with the use of MATLAB, the related parameters of the cross-section airfoil ofevery blade are calculated, and the chord length and setting angle of cross-section airfoil ofevery blade are corrected to make the blade structure smooth. According to the bladegeometric parameters, two blade models and their corresponding turbine models areestablished using the software SolidWorks basing on the airfoil’s leading edge and itsmaximum thickness, respectively.Finally, with the help of CFD technique, the two turbine models’ energy-catchingefficiencies under the design working condition are investigated and compared here. Thenthe one whose energy-catching efficiency is better than the other is chosen and also studied under other working conditions with the fluid-structure-interaction(FSI) method. And itscorresponding power curve, the thrust force curve, thrust force coefficient curve andenergy-catching coefficient curve are obtained. The turbine structural performances like thestress and deformation distribution of the turbine structure are also given. All of theseresults can provide some important references for the structural design of turbine.