Numerical simulation of foil with leading-edge tubercle for vertical-axis tidal-current turbine

I Ketut Aria Pria Utama; Dendy Satrio; Mukhtasor Mukhtasor; Mehmet Atlar; Weichao Shi; Ridho Hantoro; Giles Thomas

doi:10.15282/jmes.14.3.2020.02.0547

Authors

I Ketut Aria Pria Utama Faculty of Marine Technology, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, 60111 Surabaya, Indonesia. Phone: +62315948757; Fax: +62315932104
Dendy Satrio Faculty of Marine Technology, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, 60111 Surabaya, Indonesia. Phone: +62315948757; Fax: +62315932104
Mukhtasor Mukhtasor Faculty of Marine Technology, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, 60111 Surabaya, Indonesia. Phone: +62315948757; Fax: +62315932104
Mehmet Atlar Faculty of Engineering, University of Strathclyde, G4 0LN Glasgow, United Kingdom
Weichao Shi Faculty of Engineering, University of Strathclyde, G4 0LN Glasgow, United Kingdom
Ridho Hantoro Faculty of Industrial Technology and Systems Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, 60111 Surabaya, Indonesia
Giles Thomas Faculty of Engineering Sciences, University College London, WC1E 7JHE London, United Kingdom

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15282/jmes.14.3.2020.02.0547

Keywords:

Foil simulation, leading-edge tubercle, computational fluid dynamics, vertical-axis turbine, tidal-current energy

Abstract

The main disadvantage of the vertical-axis turbine is its low coefficient of performance. The purpose of this work was to propose a method to improve this performance by investigating the hydrodynamic forces and the flow-field of a foil that was modified with a sinusoidal leading-edge tubercle. NACA 63(4)021 was chosen as the original foil since it has a symmetrical profile that is suitable for use on a vertical-axis tidal-current turbine. The study was conducted using a numerical simulation method with ANSYS-CFX Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code to solve the incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. Firstly, the simulation results of the original foil were validated with available experimental data. Secondly, the modified foils, with three configurations of tubercles, were modelled. From the simulation results, the tubercle foils, when compared with the original foil, had similar lift performances at low Angles of Attack (0-8 degrees of AoA), lower lift performances at medium AoA (8-19 degrees) and higher lift performances at high AoA (19-32 degrees). A tubercle foil with Height/Chord (H/C) of 0.05 can maintain the static stall condition until 32 degrees. Therefore, a vertical-axis turbine with tubercle-blades provides an opportunity to increase its performance by extending the operational range for extracting energy in the dynamic stall condition.

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