Fluid dynamic design of an axial rotor for hydrokinetic riverbed turbine - Improvement introduced by a high lift foil profile

OLLER, S. A.; NALLIM, L. G.; OLLER, S.

Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy

John Wiley & Sons

Lugar: New York; Año: 2016 vol. 35 p. 1198 - 1206

1944-7450

Themain objective of this paper is to achieve a very high lift rotor to take themaximum advantage of the kinetic energy of a slow velocity water flow, whichbelongs to a lowland river type. Low speed flux and lack of depth are the mainobstacles in hydrokinetic operation. The use of a high lift aerodynamic profileand the gain of the rotor number of blades serve to accomplish the task.This work presents the fluid dynamic design for an axial hydrokineticturbine rotor, studied in a three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulation bymeans of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The use of CFD techniques avoidssome physical model assays. For the hydrokinetic turbine rotor design, first a one-dimensional(1-D) theoretical design was carried out, starting with the selection of asuitable airfoil profile to create the hydrofoil blade. Then, the 3-D rotorgeometry was defined and studied carefully by means of CFD, in order to checkits hydrodynamic behaviour, i.e., lift and drag, streamline velocities and pressurefields. The CFD results were obtained using an open CFD code (Kratos).