Numerical simulation of a new type of cross flow tidal turbine using OpenFOAM – Part II: Investigation of turbine-to-turbine interaction

Abstract: Prediction of turbine-to-turbine interaction represents a significant challenge in determining the optimized power output from a tidal stream farm, and this is an active research area. This paper presents a detailed work which examines the influence of surrounding turbines on the performance of a base case (isolated turbine). The study was conducted using a new CFD based, Immersed Body Force (IBF) model, which was validated in the first paper, and an open source CFD software package OpenFOAM was used for the simulations. The influence of the surrounding turbines was investigated using randomly chosen initial lateral and longitudinal spacing among the turbines. The initial spacing was then varied to obtain four configurations to examine the relative effect that positioning can have on the performance of the base turbine. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]