Developments in Maritime Transportation and Exploitation of Sea Resources

Guedes Soares & Lpez Pea (eds)

2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00124-4

Numerical simulation of steady and unsteady current velocity

of a vertical axis marine turbine
I. Amin
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME), Faculty of Engineering,
Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt

Q. Xiao
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UK

ABSTRACT: Motivated by the importance of investigating the hydrodynamic performance of Vertical Axis Marine Current Turbine (VAMCT) in field like to real marine environment, this work presents
numerical simulation of VAMCT in both steady and unsteady current velocity. Three bladed turbine is
examined in order to evaluate the performance of VAMCT in fluctuating current velocity. Turbine model
is studied using a time-accurate Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS). Transient rotor-stator model
with sliding mesh technique was used. User-Definition Function (UDF) is created to simulate random
fluctuated current velocity. The results show that, there are significant decrease in power efficiency in
unsteady current compared with steady case.
1

INTRODUCTION

Tidal turbine is one of the hydro-kinetic devices,

which can be classified further as Horizontal Axis
Marine Current Turbines (HAMCT) and Vertical Axis Marine Current Turbines (VAMCT),
depending on the direction of rotational axis relative to the water current flow direction. The major
advantage of VAMCT is that it is able to extract
hydrodynamic energy from any direction without
adjustment or yawing system. Straight, untwisted
and uniform section blades are simple to fabricate,
and thus widely used for VAMCT. One commonly
used tidal turbine is the Darrieus rotor, originally
patented as wind turbine in the USA in 1931 by
G.J.M. Darrieus, (Castelli, et al., 2012).
Investigation on the Vertical Axis Marine Current Turbine has been previously carried out
from different points of view. Study of VAMCT
from flow control strategy associated with swell
effect was performed by Seif Elghali et al., (2010).
Maitre, et al., (2012) investigated a Darrieus cross
flow marine turbine with a two-dimensional RANS
code. The influence of the near wall grid density on
the numerical results was discussed. Castelli, et al.
(2012) studied the flow characteristics for a three/
four/five-blade Darrieus turbine at different tip
speed and solidity ratios. The study has focused
on the reduction of local blade torque variation
by increasing the number of blades. Their results
showed that, the turbine which has large number of

blades allowed to obtain the maximum power coefficient at small angular velocities. Another work
for Castelli (Castelli, et al., 2012), investigates the
optimal grid spacing and turbulence model for 2D
numerical analysis of a vertical axis water turbine
operating at a 2 m/sec free stream current velocity.
Castelli concluded that, the resulting optimal mesh
has appeared to be quite similar to that obtained
for numerical analysis of vertical axis wind turbine.
Marine current is accumulative consequence of
ocean local and remote factors, such as winds, buoyancy fluxes, tides, and various types of waves. The
influence of forces from above factors on marine
current is not trivial. Many existing research works
simply assume the current velocity as a fixed uniform flow. However, the real marine current include
internal waves, which formed from the interfaces of
water layers and difference in density and temperatures in layers. These waves make marine current
velocity becomes a fluctuating velocity form.
Generally, most measurements of marine current have focused on obtaining time averaged current speed. Little is therefore know about temporal
fluctuations of marine current at the time scale
of a few minutes and below, (Teigen, 2002). Two
main types of marine current fluctuations can be
identified based on the literature. At a large time
scale, the marine current speed fluctuates with a
period of 6 or 12 hours which is related to tidal
astronomical phenomena. At a small time scale, it
can fluctuate with a period of few seconds or less.

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An example of the power produced by a marine

current turbine within 24 hours period is given
by Zhou et al. (2012). Teign, (2002), studied the
fluctuation of output electricity which generated
from VAMCT at small time scale. He used computer program based on Fourier transforms with
randomly selected amplitudes to measurement the
electricity fluctuation, as shown in Figure 1.
Kang et al., (2012), measured instantaneous
water velocity using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) over a 10 min period during a flood tide. The velocity measurements were
performed under two different flow conditions
(U = 1.53 and 2.01 m/s), and the time history of
the instantaneous velocity was plotted by Kang, as
shown in Figure 2. The study assumed that inlet
velocity is uniform and did not take into account
oncoming turbulence.
From the above literature review, it can be seen
that the simulation of hydrodynamic performance of
VAMCT under the condition of a fluctuated current
velocity is neglected in most available publications.
In the present work, a numerical simulation is carried out for a three straight bladed Darrieus VAMCT
in steady and unsteady current velocity. The main

Figure 1.

Time series of fluctuating current field, [2].

objective is to model a VAMCT under a condition

similar to real marine environment and evaluate its
performance in unsteady current velocity.
2

NUMERICAL MODEL

Three bladed turbines is numerically solved by commercial code ANSYS 14 aiming to evaluate the performance of turbine in both steady and unsteady
current velocity. Gambit software was used in modeling the domain and meshing the turbine.
2.1

Current fluctuation model

User Defined Function (UDF) is used to simulate the current fluctuation in ANSYS software.
Equation 1 is programmed with C++ Language and
implemented in ANSYS software.
n

u(t ) = U 0 + AU 0 sin (2 fi t )
i =1

(1)

where, U0, is the initial steady current velocity, A

is current amplitude, fi is fluctuating current frequency, and t is the time.
In case of steady current velocity, the current
speed is selected to be equal to 2 m/sec as a initial
steady current (4 knots), which is compatible with
the technical and economical analysis which being
suggested by Marine Current Turbines Limited,
Fraenkel (2002).
Equation 1 presents Fourier expression which
used to create random current velocity from three
sinusoidal wave, which have different amplitudes
and frequencies. The current amplitudes for the
three sinusoidal wave are 0.2 m, 0.1 m and 0.05 m.
The current frequencies are 100 rad/sec, 30 rad/sec
and 5 rad/sec. According to this data, the maximum current value is 2.35 m/sec and the minimum is 1.65 m/sec. The inlet velocity is fluctuated
dependents to time flow as shown in Equation 1.
the Equation results is shown in Figure 3 as a relation between current velocity value and time flow.
2.2

Computational methodology

The key parameters which quantify the turbine

performance include the power coefficient Cp, the
blade moment coefficient Cm, the blade tip speed
ratio and the blade lift coefficient CL. They are
defined as follows
The blade lift coefficient
CL =
Figure 2. The time history of the instantaneous flow
velocity measured upstream in the East River, [1].

L
0.5U 2 As

where L is the lift force.

872

(2)

2.3 Model geometry and computational domain

Figure 3. Relationship between current velocity frequency and turbine rotation frequency.

The main features of the turbine are summarized

in Table 1. Rotor azimuthal position is identified
by the angular coordinate of the blade center of
blade No.1, which was settled at 0.25 c for NACA
0021 airfoil, as can be seen in Figure 4.
Straight blades with symmetric NACA 0021
airfoil are modeled. Neither supporting arms of
blades nor shaft is included.
Figure 5 shows the dimensions and the boundary conditions of the computational domain. The
computational domain width was set 20 time rotor
diameters to avoid any interference between the
rotor and the boundaries. In order to allow a full

The power coefficient

Cp =

P
0.5U 3As

Table 1. Main geometrical features of the

analyzed rotor.

(3)

Dimensions
Diameter Drotor [mm]
Height Hrotor [mm]
Number of blade N [-]
Blade profile
Chord length c [mm]
Spoke-blade connection
Solidity parameter

The total power

P = Mi 2

(4)

The blade moment coefficient

Cm =

M
0.5U 2 As

1030
1456.4
3
NACA 0021
85.8
0.25 c
0.5

(5)

The turbine blade tip speed ratio

R
U

(6)

where P is the power generated by turbine defined

in Equation (4), 2 is the turbine angular velocity, Mi is the blade moment relative to the turbine
center, is the fluid density, U is the velocity of the
incoming flow, As is the turbine swept area and R
is turbine radius.
The blade Reynolds number for this work was
defined as:
Re =

(R c )

(7)

Figure 4.

Azimuthal coordinate of blade.

where c is the blade chord. The dynamic viscosity

was assumed to be 0.0013 and the density was set
to 1000 kg/m2. The Reynolds number in this study
was varied from 6.35 104 to 1.922 105, from this
range of Reynolds number, typical turbulence flow
case was assumed.
The solidity parameter is defined as

cN
R

where N is the number of turbine blades.

(8)
Figure 5. Main dimension of the computational domain.

873

Figure 6.
0012.

Mesh around turbine rotor and airfoil NACA

development of the wake, inlet and outlet boundary conditions placed respectively 10 time upwind
and 16 time downwind with respect to the center
of rotor place. Two symmetry boundary conditions are used for the two side walls. The circumference around the circular opening, centered on the
turbine rotational axis, is set as an interface, thus
ensuring the continuity in the flow field. Unstructured mesh was chosen for the domain with rotor,
in order to reduce time to prepare the CFD simulations. Mesh around blades and rotor are shown in
Figure 6. The inlet is set as a velocity inlet, with a
constant current velocity of 2 m/sec in steady condition. while, was set as UDF file in fluctuated current condition. outlet was set as a pressure outlet.
3

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A numerical study is performed on a VAMCT

in steady and unsteady marine current velocity,
the study aimed to identify the performance of
VAMCT in unsteady current velocity. In the following, we start with the description of the simulation
set-up, followed by the validation and verification
of developed numerical methods. The simulated
results are presented in graphic diagrams showing the difference between the power coefficient
performance in both steady and unsteady current
velocities.
3.1

Simulation set-up and turbulence

model selection

A transient rotor-stator model is employed to

model the flow field around blade with unsteady

simulation. A moving mesh technique is applied

to rotor turbine blades at a constant rotational
speed.
Similar to wind turbine, the blade of marine
tidal turbine varies its angle of attack during one
rotating cycle. At a large angle of attack, dynamic
stall phenomenon appears, causing large flow
separation. Once it occurs, the choice of a proper
turbulence model is very important in order to
accurately predict the flow with large adverse pressure gradient and separation.
Ferreira et al. (2007) found that one-equation
Spalart-Almaras model and two-equation k -
models are unable to predict the large eddies at high
angle of attack. Wolfe and Ohcs (1997) showed
that Standard k - model may lead to inaccurate
results when the flow separation occurs. Howell,
et al. (2010) used RNG k - model and concluded
that this model can predict flow field with large
flow separations more accurately than Standard
k - model. Yu, et al. (2010), showed that the
choice of k - SST turbulence model can obtain
good results because of its capability of capturing
the main flow-field characteristics in the near wall
layers and separated flow regions. Therefore, k -
SST turbulence model is selected for the present
work, according to Yu recommendation.
3.2

Verification

CFD mesh dependence test implies to perform a

series of calculations with different grids by varying number of nodes and elements, for evaluating convergence of most relevant flow variables,
which in this case is the torque transferred from
fluid to blades. Three different grid node densities are examined: coarse (about 64,000), medium
(about 128,000), and fine (about 276,000). Details
of grid information are included in Table 2. Three
different start size meshes were presented with the
same growth rate equal to 1.05. Grid size limit are
changed from 0.25 in case of fine mesh to 0.65 in
case of coarse mesh density. Start grid size are varied from 0.01 in case of course mesh to 0.006 in
case of fine mesh. Results of validation in three different grids for the average power coefficient are:
coarse, 0.358; medium, 0.323; and fine, 0.319 along

Table 2. Grid dependence test (Errors are estimated

based on experimental Cp = 0.31).
Mesh
density

Growth %

No. of mesh
elements

Cp

Error

Coarse
Medium
Fine

1.05
1.05
1.05

64,000
128,000
276,000

0.358
0.323
0.319

18.7%
4.2%
2.9%

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a complete revolution of blades at (TSR = 3.0).

The error was calculated as a percentage based
on experimental Cp value which is equal to 0.31
(according to Castelli, et al. (2012)). The running
time is calculated for the three cases, the running
time of fine mesh expended about 12 hour from
each run. while, in case of medium and course mesh
expended about 5 and 3 hours respectively. A grid
that represents a compromise between the accuracy
and computational cost is selected. The total Cm of
3 bladed turbine obtained for three sets of grids,
then the total power coefficient, Cp is calculated
and plotted in Figure 5. Based on the comparison
in Figure 5 and the calculated error percentage in
Table 2, there is no significant difference between
the plotted curve and error percentage in case of
medium and fine grid, therefore for simplicity purposes and time saving, all simulations in this work
are computed by using a medium grid.
3.3

Figure 6. Comparison of power coefficient variation

with TSR for numerical and experimental data, which
presented in Castelli, et al. (2012).

Validation

In order to validate our numerical model developed, simulation is conducted with a steady current velocity. The results of power coefficient at
different tip speed ratios are compared with experimental results of Castelli, et al. (2012), as shown
in Figure 6. The validation process done in range
of tip speed ratio from 1.44 to 3.09, based on the
available data from Castelli, et al. (2012). The computational result shows good agreement as compared with Castellis experimental result especially
at high TSR range. The high discrepancy between
numerical and experimental results at lower TSR

Figure 7. The torque of the three blades of 3-blade

VAMCT (steady condition, TSR = 3).

can improved in future by increase the meshing

around blades.
3.4 The performance of vamct under steady
and unsteady current velocity

Figure 5. Power coefficient of modeled VAMCT during one revolution for different meshing size under steady
current velocity condition.

Three bladed turbines is numerically solved aiming

to evaluate the performance of turbine in both steady
and unsteady current velocity. Two current velocities
models are assumed in this study and setup as velocity inlet, one is fixed value 2 m/sec (steady case) and
the other is fluctuated (unsteady case).
The two cases were numerically solved and the
results were graphically plotted from Figures 7
to10. The torque results of the turbine under steady

875

Figure 8. The torque of the three blades of 3-blade

VAMCT (unsteady condition, TSR = 3).

condition at TSR = 3.0 is shown in Figure 7. While,

the torque of the same turbine under unsteady current velocity is shown in Figure 8. It can be seen in
Figure 7 the symmetrical cycle performance which
is known for this type of turbines. The symmetrical trend is disappear in unsteady case, as shown in
Figure 8, but the three cycle is clearly shown during the revolution.
Power coefficient is calculated and plotted
for both steady and unsteady cases, as shown in
Figure 9. The comparison shown in Figure 9 shows
that there are three local increment in power coefficient for the three blades cycles. But the total area
under power coefficient curve in unsteady case is
little small that steady case.
The power performance of the turbine in both
steady and unsteady current velocity is plotted at
different TSR, as shown in Figure 10. The figure
shows that there is significant decrease in power
in unsteady case compared with steady one, especially at high TSR (TSR > 2.0). While at small TSR
(TSR > 2.0) there are no differences in performance between steady and unsteady cases.
4

Figure 9. Comparison between the power coefficient in

both steady and unsteady cases at TSR = 3.

CONCLUSION

Three bladed turbine is numerically analyzed

in steady and unsteady marine current velocity in
order to evaluate performance of this turbine in
both cases. Fluctuating current velocity is modeled
and presented in Fourier expression. The modeled Fourier expression results like to real marine
current fluctuation which was measured in tidal
region. The presented turbine model is design and
solved numerically. The meshed is verified and the
grid tested at different meshing and nodes numbers. Computational predictions of the power
coefficient of the turbine carried out and validated
with available experimental data.
The results of steady and unsteady cases show
that, there are significant differences between two
cases and the assumption of steady case could be not
suitable in design stages. The total power coefficient
of unsteady case is decreased with about 7.5% compared with steady case at TSR = 3.0. While there are
no change in power coefficient at small TSR. Also,
there are significant increase in local torque humps
and hollows in unsteady case, which should be considered in structure analysis of such turbines.
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Figure 10. Comparison between the power coefficient

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