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Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2020) | Viewed by 18193

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. M. Sergio Campobasso

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Guest Editor

Renewable Energy and Computational Fluid Dynamics, Lancaster University, LA1 4YR Lancaster, UK
Interests: offshore renewable energy; distributed wind energy generation; wind and tidal current turbine fluid mechanics; floating offshore wind; surface gravity wave loads on tidal current turbines; turbine/wake interactions; horizontal and vertical axis turbines; oscillating wings for power generation; blade erosion and maintenance planning; deterministic and probabilistic multi-disciplinary turbine analysis and design; turbulence modelling; frequency-domain navier-stokes cfd; applied machine learning; high-performance computing

Prof. Dr. Ling Qian

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Guest Editor

Department of Computing and Mathematics, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M1 5GD, UK
Interests: computational aerodynamics and hydrodynamics; numerical wave tanks; Cartesian cut cell and overset grid; wave structure interaction; offshore renewable energy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The exploitation of offshore renewable energy (ORE) and its contribution to decarbonising electricity generation are rapidly growing on a global scale. The worldwide exploration of thus far unconventional technologies, such as floating offshore wind turbines and tidal stream energy converters, is paving the way to step changes in the scale of ORE exploitation, but outstanding challenges in understanding the complex interactions between energy converters and the harsh marine environment, and harnessing this knowledge into next generation design systems, remain. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has the potential of making a great contribution to the solution of these challenges, but its use often requires the development of novel application-tailored modelling features and diverse approaches to make these typically multiscale simulations computationally affordable, ranging from high-performance computing to blending CFD with low-fidelity engineering codes (multi-fidelity approach) and/or machine learning.

The main aim of this Special Issue is to collect outstanding research articles highlighting original development and/or applications of CFD in the area of offshore renewable energy, covering a wide range of problems. Topics of interest to this Special Issue include but are not limited to the development and/or application of CFD in:

ORE resource assessment, wind farm, and tidal array layout design;
Turbine/wake interaction in wind farms and tidal arrays;
Wave- and turbulence-induced loads in tidal energy converters;
Floating and fixed bottom wind turbine analysis and design;
Active and passive rotor flow control;
Wave energy;
Fluid/structure interaction;
Hybrid methods combining CFD and machine learning;
Combined use of CFD and experiments in any of the above topics.

Dr. M. Sergio Campobasso
Dr. Ling Qian
Guest Editors

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Keywords

computational fluid dynamics
offshore renewable energy
resource assessment
fixed bottom and floating wind turbines
tidal energy converters
oscillating wings
rotor flow control
turbine/wake interactions

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 7308 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Uncertainty Assessment of CFD Investigation of the Nonlinear Difference-Frequency Wave Loads on a Semisubmersible FOWT Platform

by Lu Wang, Amy Robertson, Jason Jonkman and Yi-Hsiang Yu

Sustainability 2021, 13(1), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010064 - 23 Dec 2020

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 2774

Abstract

Current mid-fidelity modeling approaches for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have been found to underpredict the nonlinear, low-frequency wave excitation and the response of semisubmersible FOWTs. To examine the cause of this underprediction, the OC6 project is using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools to investigate the wave loads on the OC5-DeepCwind semisubmersible, with a focus on the nonlinear difference-frequency excitation. This paper focuses on assessing the uncertainty of the CFD predictions from simulations of the semisubmersible in a fixed condition under bichromatic wave loading and on establishing confidence in the results for use in improving mid-fidelity models. The uncertainty for the nonlinear wave excitation is found to be acceptable but larger than that for the wave-frequency excitation, with the spatial discretization error being the dominant contributor. Further, unwanted free waves at the difference frequency have been identified in the CFD solution. A wave-splitting and wave load-correction procedure are presented to remove the contamination from the free waves in the results. A preliminary comparison to second-order potential-flow theory shows that the CFD model predicted significantly higher difference-frequency wave excitations, especially in surge, suggesting that the CFD results can be used to better calibrate the mid-fidelity tools. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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26 pages, 5047 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Using Experimentally Validated Navier-Stokes CFD to Minimize Tidal Stream Turbine Power Losses Due to Wake/Turbine Interactions

by Federico Attene, Francesco Balduzzi, Alessandro Bianchini and M. Sergio Campobasso

Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 8768; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12218768 - 22 Oct 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3023

Abstract

Tidal stream turbines fixed on the seabed can harness the power of tides at locations where the bathymetry and/or coastal geography result in high kinetic energy levels of the flood and/or neap currents. In large turbine arrays, however, avoiding interactions between upstream turbine wakes and downstream turbine rotors may be hard or impossible, and, therefore, tidal array layouts have to be designed to minimize the power losses caused by these interactions. For the first time, using Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics simulations which model the turbines with generalized actuator disks, two sets of flume tank experiments of an isolated turbine and arrays of up to four turbines are analyzed in a thorough and comprehensive fashion to investigate these interactions and the power losses they induce. Very good agreement of simulations and experiments is found in most cases. The key novel finding of this study is the evidence that the flow acceleration between the wakes of two adjacent turbines can be exploited not only to increase the kinetic energy available to a turbine working further downstream in the accelerated flow corridor, but also to reduce the power losses of said turbine due to its rotor interaction with the wake produced by a fourth turbine further upstream. By making use of periodic array simulations, it is also found that there exists an optimal lateral spacing of the two adjacent turbines, which maximizes the power of the downstream turbine with respect to when the two adjacent turbines are absent or further apart. This is accomplished by trading off the amount of flow acceleration between the wakes of the lateral turbines, and the losses due to shear and mixing of the front turbine wake and the wakes of the two lateral turbines. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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25 pages, 10979 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On the Performance of Small-Scale Horizontal Axis Tidal Current Turbines. Part 1: One Single Turbine

by Ramin Alipour, Roozbeh Alipour, Seyed Saeid Rahimian Koloor, Michal Petrů and Seyed Alireza Ghazanfari

Sustainability 2020, 12(15), 5985; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12155985 - 24 Jul 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 2620

Abstract

The blade number of a current tidal turbine is one of the essential parameters to increase the stability, performance and efficiency for converting tidal current energy into rotational energy to generate electricity. This research attempts to investigate the effect of blade number on the performance of a small-scale horizontal tidal current turbine in the case of torque, thrust coefficient and power coefficient. Towards this end and according to the blade element momentum theory, three different turbines, i.e., two, three and four-bladed, were modeled using Solidworks software based on S-814 airfoil and then exported to the ANSYS-FLUENT for computational flow dynamics (CFD) analysis. SST-K-ω turbulence model was used to predict the turbulence behavior and several simulations were conducted at 2 ≤ tip speed ratio ≤ 7. Pressure contours, turbulence kinetic energy contours, cut-in-speed-curves, and streamlines around the blades and rotors were extracted and compared to provide an ability for a deep discussion on the turbine performance. The results show that in the case of obtainable power, the optimal value of tip speed ratio is around 5, so that the maximum power was achieved for the four-bladed turbine. Out of optimal condition, higher blade number and lower blade number turbines should be used at less than and greater than the optimal values of tip speed ratio, respectively. The results of simulations for the three-bladed turbine were validated against the experimental data with good agreement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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30 pages, 12979 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Investigation of Interference Effects Between Wind Turbine and Spar-Type Floating Platform Under Combined Wind-Wave Excitation

by Yang Huang and Decheng Wan

Sustainability 2020, 12(1), 246; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010246 - 27 Dec 2019

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 3448

Abstract

In order to further understand the coupled aero-hydrodynamic performance of the floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) in realistic ocean environment, it is necessary to investigate the interference effects between the unsteady aerodynamics of the wind turbine and different degree-of-freedom (DOF) platform motions under combined wind-wave excitation. In this paper, a validated CFD analysis tool FOWT-UALM-SJTU with modified actuator line model is applied for the coupled aero-hydrodynamic simulations of a spar-type FOWT system. The aero-hydrodynamic characteristics of the FOWT with various platform motion modes and different wind turbine states are compared and analyzed to explore the influence of the interference effects between the wind turbine and the floating platform on the performance of the FOWT. The dynamic responses of local relative wind speed and local attack angle at the blade section and wind-wave forces acting on the floating platform are discussed in detail to reveal the interaction mechanism between the aerodynamic loads and different DOF platform motions. It is shown that the surge motion and the pitch motion of the floating platform both significantly alter the local attack angle, while only the platform pitch motion have significant impacts on the local relative wind speed experienced by the rotating blades. Besides, the shaft tilt and the pro-cone angle of the wind turbine and the height-dependent wind speed all contribute to the variation of the local attack angle. The coupling between the platform motions along different DOFs is obviously amplified by the aerodynamic forces derived from the wind turbine. In addition, the wake deflection phenomenon is clearly observed in the near wake region when platform pitch motion is considered. The dynamic pitch motion of the floating platform also contributes to the severe wake velocity deficit and the increased wake width. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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17 pages, 2939 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Near Trapping Effect on Wave-Power Extraction by Linear Periodic Arrays

by Dezhi Ning, Zechen He, Ying Gou and Malin Göteman

Sustainability 2020, 12(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010029 - 18 Dec 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2088

Abstract

Near trapping is a kind of strong hydrodynamic interaction phenomenon in a regular array under specific incident wave conditions, which causes the excitation force on the structures in the array to change suddenly. In this paper, based on linear potential flow theory, the effects of near trapping on the hydrodynamic interaction and wave-power extraction characteristics of linear periodic arrays composed of the oscillating float type wave energy converters are studied by using the higher-order boundary element method in a frequency domain. The parameters considered include the separation spacing, number of devices, and incident wave direction. It is found that the near trapping significantly reduces the overall wave-power extraction, especially for the cases with a large number of devices, and changes the trend of the power distribution. The occurrence of the near trapping phenomenon depends on the ratio of the separation spacing to the wavelength and the incident wave direction. The results highlight the effective layout of linear arrays under the influence of near trapping, which not only ensures the total production power, but also reduces the power difference among wave energy converters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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26 pages, 10476 KiB

Open AccessArticle

LES Study of Wake Meandering in Different Atmospheric Stabilities and Its Effects on Wind Turbine Aerodynamics

by Xu Ning and Decheng Wan

Sustainability 2019, 11(24), 6939; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11246939 - 05 Dec 2019

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 3539

Abstract

Wake meandering disturbs the stability of the far wake field and thus increases the fatigue loads of downstream wind turbines. A deep understanding of this phenomenon under atmospheric boundary layers and its relation to the structural loads helps to better model the dynamic wake and alleviate adverse effects. A large eddy simulation and an actuator line model are introduced in the present work to simulate the wake field and aerodynamic loads of wind turbines with different longitudinal spacings. By temporal filtering and the gaussian fitting method, the wake center and edge are precisely defined, and the dynamic wake characteristics, including the wake width, oscillation amplitude, and frequency, are described based on the statistical data of the simulated flow field. Results reveal that the wake meandering is caused by both large-scale atmospheric structure and the unstable vortex shed from the rotor because two distinct meandering frequency ranges are detected. As the atmosphere instability increases, the former becomes the dominant inducing factor of the meandering movements. Further, the analysis of the correlation between the inflow characteristics and the wake deflection shows that the Taylor hypothesis remains valid within a distance of over a thousand meters under both neutral and convective boundary layers, proving the feasibility of using this hypothesis for wake evolution prediction. In addition, our study shows that the fluctuation of blade root moment and yaw moment is significantly intensified by the meandering wake, with their standard deviation is augmenting by over two times under both atmospheric conditions. The power spectrum illustrates that the component with rotor rotation frequency of the former is sensible to the wake effect, but for the latter, the power spectrum density of all frequencies is increased under the meandering wake. These indicate that the fatigue loads will be underestimated without considering the wake meandering effect. Moreover, the high correlation between the wake deflection and yaw moment implies that we can predict yaw moment based on the incoming flow information with high accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Offshore Renewable Energy)

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