Computational fluid dynamics modelling of a hydrokinetic turbine Available to Purchase

Hydrokinetic turbine is usually used to convert the kinetic energy from flowing fluid into electricity. It is a useful tool for converting renewable energy sources from hydropower application. Performance of the turbine is very much depending on the fluid dynamics of flow around the turbine. Computational fluid dynamics modelling is one of the methods for fluid dynamics investigation but finding the best models to be used to solve for dynamic change of flow around turbine is difficult. Models should be solved with guidance from real life data (experimental) and finding perfect match between flow physics, numerical methods and experimentally measured data is always challenging leading to difficulty in many design processes. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model investigation was done based on published experimental work. A hydrokinetic water turbine was drawn using the MHKF1-180 and NACA4418 foils dimensions. The models were solved using Turbo mode in the commercial software of ANSYS CFX. Two commonly used Reynolds-Average-Navier-Stokes (RANS) models were solved; the k-model and the SST k-model. The results show that the SST k-model is a more suitable model for the hydrokinetic turbine as investigated in this paper. The finding reported in this paper helps future modelling effort so that accurate predictions of fluid dynamics across hydrokinetic turbine could be achieved.