Study of the power performance of a variable-camber hydrofoil used in a flapping tidal stream turbine.

In this study, power analysis of a variable-camber hydrofoil was conducted through a comparison with a rigid hydrofoil when used in a flapping hydrofoil turbine (FHT). The responses obtained by a mathematical dynamic model are inputted to calculate the available power, input power, hydrodynamic power, extracted power and system efficiency. This work considers two scenarios with identical counter-loads and with similar amplitudes of the obtained response conditions. In the former scenario, the efficiency of the variable-camber hydrofoil becomes slightly higher than that of the rigid hydrofoil. Meanwhile, in the other scenario, the efficiency of the variable-camber hydrofoil is considerably higher than that of the rigid hydrofoil. This study shows that the variable-camber hydrofoil would be a good scheme for improving the power performance of an FHT despite the slight increase in complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]