Turbine toolset

There are many sources of sustainable and renewable energy in the marine environment. Moving water from tidal, river, and ocean currents has a significant potential to help coastal and in-land communities generate useful power.

But floating hydrokinetic turbine systems must thrive in a tight environment. They need to operate where the water flow is sustained and fast, but that’s a challenging task. The current profile isn’t always uniform and can change abruptly. Ocean waves add a dynamic effect that’s compressed near the surface, too. Working in higher flow speeds mean more power generated, but this comes with ever-greater forces on the entire system, too. A turbine mooring system needs the right give-and-take to keep the system on station, generating useful power, while shedding extreme loads in survival conditions. But a mooring can’t be designed without an accurate picture of turbine performance in a dynamic marine environment.

What’s needed is software that accurately accounts for turbine thrust and power

The software needs to account for how each turbine is different, including the profile of the blades and the specific control system it uses. Flow variation from turbulence, current, and waves affects turbine thrust forces during power generation have to be accounted for, too. Software that accounts for these dynamic effects will give a complete picture of the mooring response and increase the chances of a reliable design and accurate power capture.

Account for changing turbine thrust from flow variation across the blades. Varying flows through the turbine swept area can have a significant impact on thrust forces. Flow variation from a shear current, or combined ocean waves and current, are factored in for a much more accurate prediction of turbine thrust and power capture.

Incorporate floating hull motion on turbine performance. Floating turbine system movement affects the relative flow speed and resulting thrust and power capture. Motion can be substantial when there are sizeable ocean waves. Account for floating system motion in resolving turbine thrust and power.

Incorporate a wide variety of mooring materials. Mooring designs have vastly different responses depending on materials used like elastic tethers, fibre rope, chain, and mid-water floats. Evaluate different mooring designs using commercially available components from the ProteusDS Official Parts Library.

Resolve turbine peak thrust loads in high-frequency turbulence. Time and space variation in free-stream current turbulence introduces highly varying turbine thrust loads. Account for the dynamic range of turbine thrust to resolve the peak thrust force and the resulting peak mooring loads.

Capture load variation for structural and mooring fatigue life effects. Turbine thrust load variation in free-stream turbulence and combined ocean wave and current loading produce complex load variation and uncertainty on system fatigue life. Calculate the load variation to inform fatigue life calculations on structural hull and mooring components.

Dig in to hydrokinetic turbine mooring design with ProteusDS

• Account for your specific turbine control regime through a linked library file
• Investigate mooring ultimate limit state through many combinations of ocean wave and current design load cases
• Specify turbulence profiles to resolve high-frequency loads affecting ultimate and fatigue limit states
• Isolate anchor requirements from dynamic mooring response
• Account for mooring interaction with site-specific bathymetry in full 3D
• Use a wide range of elastic mooring components that can incorporate nonlinear stretch
• Leverage trusted NREL open-source software modules TurbSim and AeroDyn to capture hydrokinetic turbine performance