Influence of Swept Blades on the Performance and Hydrodynamic Characteristics of a Bidirectional Horizontal-Axis Tidal Turbine

Abstract

Horizontal-axis tidal turbines (HATTs) have an acknowledged potential to extract a considerable amount of clean renewable energy from ocean tides. Among these, bidirectional HATTs (BHATTs) with bidirectional hydrofoils are thought to have higher economy than general HATTs. To improve the BHATTs, this study systemically investigated the influence of swept blades on the performance and hydrodynamics of the BHATT. A three-dimensional (3D) numerical model based on OpenFOAM was adopted to simulate a full-scale BHATT. The numerical framework was validated using two well-known experiments, and the mesh convergence was taken into consideration. The results indicate that the forward and backward swept blades have a limited impact on the performance and hydrodynamics of the BHATT. The upstream swept blade leads to a 4.3% decrease in the load on the rotor at design tip speed ratio (TSR) with a 2.0% decrease in the power. The BHATT with a downstream swept blade can produce 3.2% more energy at TSR = 6. Moreover, the swept blades have the opposite effect on the power of the BHATT at TSR = 6 and TSR = 9.