Risk and cost mitigation through determination of tidal turbine loading under real turbulent tidal flow conditions

Principle Investigator
Dr. Dominic Groulx, Dalhousie University, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Email: dominic.groulx@dal.ca
Website: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/engineering/mechanical/faculty-staff/our-faculty/professors/dominic-groulx.html

NRC Collaborator
Julien Cousineau, P.Eng., MASc. Research Engineer Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering

Project description

Water exerts forces (loads) on a tidal turbine that are orders of magnitudes greater than loads encountered on wind turbine. Tidal companies still do not have accurate and validated ways of determining expected loads on their turbine during the design stages which leads to either poorly built system that fail prematurely, or overdesigned/overbuilt systems that exponentially increase capital and marine operation costs. This lack of accurate information on spatio-temporal load variations on blade turbines is considered one of the major design risk factor from an engineering point of view, which leads to higher insurance cost on the operation of tidal devices.

The objective of this project is to build on the applicants’ labs’ ability to model and test hydokienetic turbines to determine local and time-variant turbine blade loads. It is also to model real-tidal transient flow over a turbine  and determine numerically the spatial and transient load on a turbine.

Requirements

• Seeking a mechanical engineering graduate, with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering
• The candidate must already possess knowledge and skills required to tackle such a project
• The candidate must already have a background in fluid mechanics, energy system and numerical modeling