TIDEMORPHER – Tidal Turbine Technologies with Morphing Blades

Figure caption: (Left) Hyper flexible rotor blades improve the performance and endurance of CFTT (middle) Full characterisation of the FSI on blade level for a CFTT with span-wise hyper-flexible rotor blades using surface tracking, high-speed Particle-Image-Velocimetry and synchronised force measurements (right) Optical measurement techniques were emloyed and developed for the surface tracking

Tidal energy is largely unaffected by climate change and weather and can play a key element for climate adaptation for a resilient energy infrastructure. Hydrokinetic cross-flowtidal turbines (CFTT) provide a magnitude higher area based power density than competing technologies due to positive turbine interactions. This is important as it allows for an optimal exploitation of tidal resources with lowest ecological impact. However CFTT suffer from alternating loads and poor efficiency of the single turbine.

The TIDEMORPHER project addresses these drawbacks in an interdisciplinary team of engineering and computer scientists. It performs basic research and method development for adaptive passive and active morphing blade technologies in turbomachinery with an application on the societal relevant topic of a safe European energy infrastructure.

The project will determine and analyse optimal chordwise morphing trajectories to control the flow at blade level for a multitude of operation points and turbine designs with use of a surrogate model of a CFTT rotor. The detailed study of the flow around a morphing blade has a possible but not limited application on CFTT and the findings can be transferred in large on other turbomachinery. The research plan comprises a combination of experimental and numerical methods. Core methodology will be an experimental optimisation which couples evolutionary algorithms with fully automated experiments. This experimental determination of the optimal morphing trajectories and a further analyse using numerical experiments with 2D and 3D simulations will allow for a better understanding of the relevant parameters and mechanisms for flow control in other highly dynamic systems.

The outcome will be analysed with optical measurements (high-speed PIV and cross section deformation tracking) synchronised with advanced instrumentation (forces, moments, strain, acceleration, pressure). These experiments will be complemented by numerical simulations (CFD for active actuation and FSI for passive actuation) with open source software and allow for a thorough characterisation of the fluid-structure interactions.

The project will build on previouswork and combine unconventional piezo-based area actuators formerly employed in biomimicking underwater robotics with strain measurements as well as embedded inertial measurement units and pressure sensors systems in the blade. Code development and advanced numerical simulations will complement the work.

FUNDING

Tec 21

Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg