Prediction of the flow around a floating axis marine current turbine

The cost of energy produced by marine currents can be reduced by flexibly supporting the vertical axis (or cross flow) water turbine. Although the unfixed tilt position of the turbine is not the optimal for harnessing energy, it reduces the support structures of the turbine and hence the construction cost of the turbine. For the realization of the concept, the decrease of the efficiency must be predicted and fully compensated by the reduction of construction cost. This paper provides the numerical flow simulation of the tilted cross flow turbine for assessing the influence of its tilted position to the performance. The flow simulation is by the open source flow simulation software, QBlade.