URANSE simulation of an active variable-pitch cross-flow Darrieus tidal turbine: Sinusoidal pitch function investigation

Abstract

This article describes a 2D CFD simulation implementation of a crossflow tidal turbine, the blades of which have their pitch modified during revolution. Unsteady flow around the turbine is computed with an URANSE method, using the solver ANSYS-CFX. Spatial and temporal discretizations have been studied. The pitch motion of the blades is obtained through mesh deformation, and the main rotation is implemented through sliding boundaries, with general grid interface model. The turbulence model used is kx SST. Langtry Menter transition model was tried but showed high discrepancies with experimental results. Five experimental cases were used to assess the accuracy of the simulation. It provided accurate computed forces for a wide range of tip speed ratios, and proved to be suitable for exploratory simulations. Harmonic pitch control was thus implemented for a tip speed ratio of 5, close to an operational value for a crossflow turbine. First, second and third harmonics pitch function were tested. It was shown that an improvement of more than 50% could be achieved with the second harmonics, with a large reduction in thrust. The flow inside the turbine and close to the blade was examined so that the case of performance improvement due to pitch control could be clearly understood. It was observed that turbine efficiency improvement requires a very slight recirculation and an angle of attack decrease on the upstream part of the turbine, and an angle of attack increase on the downstream part. The flow deceleration through the turbine was found to be a primary factor in pitch function as well. Moreover the hydrodynamic torque and thus the energy required to control the pitch were found to be insignificant.