Hydrodynamic modelling of marine tidal turbine: A state of the art review

With increasing reliance on renewable energy, tidal energy has attracted increased attention and investment due to its potential, in terms of reliability and predictability. This paper reviews the recent progress in key issues of tidal turbines and discusses the methods used in present research. In the development of tidal current turbines, theoretical and computational hydrodynamic modelling are quite essential. Some simplified approaches, such as Blade Element Momentum Theory (BMET), can provide a quick predication of a device’s hydrodynamic performance and power output. However, with growing computational capabilities, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has gained popularity due to its accuracy and versatility. Meanwhile, due to the significant development of marine energy, laboratory tests and field trials of large-scale prototypes of tidal turbines have been conducted. In addition to hydrodynamic performance, some other system components such as supporting structures and device clusters, are also addressed in the literature. Despite the large number of studies over the last decades, marine tidal device technology is still not a fully mature technology. To this end, the fatigue performance of turbine blades still lacks detailed investigation, which plays an important part in the overall performance of the turbine over its design life, especially in complex submarine environments. This paper describes the state-of-the-art of both the numerical and physical modelling of tidal turbine rotors. A discussion, based on results from the H2020 MaRINET2 project, on fluctuations due to thrust loadings on turbine blades in current and wave conditions has also been presented.