A viscous vortex lattice method for analysis of cross-flow propellers and turbines

Brenden P. Epps, Bernard T. Roesler, Richard B. Medvitz, Yeunun Choo and Jarlath McEntee

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 143, issue C, 1035-1052

Abstract: Marine hydrokinetic turbines are a promising source of renewable energy, but the costs of existing cross-flow turbine designs are too high. In order to develop new designs with reduced costs, there exists a need for a low-order computational model that is simultaneously fast, accurate, and robust. Herein, we present a novel theoretical model for the analysis of cross-flow propellers and turbines based on the vortex lattice method (VLM). In order to overcome the limitation that the VLM ignores viscous effects (such as trailing-edge flow separation), we present a novel method to account for viscous-thickness-load coupling (VTLC). In order to overcome the difficulty that wake passages cause the VLM to be unstable, we present the panel-averaged induced velocity for the influence of wake vortices on the blades. Herein, we describe our model and provide verification versus RANS CFD. Results show that our VLM + VTLC model predictions are three times more accurate than prior low-order models (i.e. three times lower root mean square error to high-fidelity RANS results) yet 10,000 times faster than RANS over a wide range of operating conditions.

Keywords: Hydrokinetic energy; Cross-flow turbine; Vortex lattice method; Viscous-thickness-load-coupling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:143:y:2019:i:c:p:1035-1052

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.05.053

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