Flow & Benthic Ecology 4D (FLOWBEC)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Engineering
Organisations
Publications
Creech A
(2017)
Effects of Support Structures in an LES Actuator Line Model of a Tidal Turbine with Contra-Rotating Rotors
in Energies
Draycott S
(2018)
Isolating incident and reflected wave spectra in the presence of current
in Coastal Engineering Journal
Draycott S
(2019)
Resolving combined wave-current fields from measurements using interior point optimization
in Coastal Engineering
Gajardo D
(2019)
Capturing the development and interactions of wakes in tidal turbine arrays using a coupled BEM-DES model
in Ocean Engineering
O'Carroll JPJ
(2017)
Tidal Energy: The benthic effects of an operational tidal stream turbine.
in Marine environmental research
Sellar B
(2018)
Characterisation of Tidal Flows at the European Marine Energy Centre in the Absence of Ocean Waves
in Energies
| Description | Using procedures created, within FLOWBEC, to identify the environmental impact within the project an assessment of the impact on benthic communities near the SeaGen turbine in the Strangford Narrows of Northern Ireland has been performed. Results from the fully three dimensional, turbulent and transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, performed on the National Supercomputer ARCHER, were used to characterise the highly turbulent flow around SeaGen. An analysis of the wake of the turbine near the sea-bed was used to establish the likely impact on benthic communities, results show that this impact is negligible due to the small localised area over which a Moderate/Good impact was identified. Results from the simulations have been compared with benthic survey results confirming the findings. The CFD simulations also show that the wake of the support structure contributes greatly to the down stream turbulence, creating stronger mixing in the wake than would be present if the structure was not included in the simulation. The presence of the support causes an upstream effect which leads to a cyclic fluctuation in the instantaneous power output of the rotors of about 4%. This in turn causes a cyclic fluctuation in the wake at a the frequency as that associated with the blades passing in front of the cross beam (in this case the frequency is twice the rotational frequency as SeaGen is a two bladed turbine). An important consequence of this result is that CFD simulations have to account for the presence of the blades and support structure with sufficient accuracy to be of use in both assessing environmental impacts and determining turbine reliability. |
| Exploitation Route | From the modelling point of view the work has established the required paradigm for modelling tidal turbines, whilst taken together with the analysis by the marine ecologists it shows that the impact resulting from the flow past tidal turbines can be considered negligible. These are import findings for regulators and consenting agencies. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Energy,Environment |
| Description | The findings have been made available to consenting bodies (including Marine Scotland) to inform their decision processes relating to marine energy. In one case, results from the computer simulations performed in FlowBEC led to a major piece of work as part of the of the EU FP7-Energy programme TIDES project "Tidal Demonstration for Energy Scheme" (FP7-322428), coordinated by DP-Energy which looked at the possibility of deploying a farm of Tidal turbines off Fair Head in Northern Ireland. The project was ultimately unsuccessful due to the unavailability of a grid connection. Significant design studies of the hydrodynamics of the fame and the impact on the marine ecosystem were conducted by Edinburgh University and the Scottish Association for Marine Science. The work also contributed to the EU RealTide project (H2020-727689), coordinated by Bureau Veritas which looked at the impact of waves and large scale turbulent flow structures on the loads on tidal turbines. The project has led to improved guidelines from Bureau Veritas and has provided statistical and spectral loading data for full scale turbine blade test facilities (such as the new FastBlade facility) and for blade designers. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Energy,Environment,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| Impact Types | Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | (RealTide) - Advanced monitoring, simulation and control of tidal devices in unsteady, highly turbulent realistic tide environments |
| Amount | € 4,974,990 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 727689 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 12/2020 |
| Description | (TIDES) - Tidal Demonstration for Energy Scheme |
| Amount | € 13,615,045 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 322428 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 04/2013 |
| End | 04/2018 |
| Description | EPSRC and NERC Centre for Doctoral Training in Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) |
| Amount | £6,118,276 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S023933/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2019 |
| End | 03/2028 |
| Description | Extension of UKCMER Core Research, Industry and International Engagement |
| Amount | £1,517,202 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/P008682/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 12/2016 |
| End | 11/2018 |
| Description | Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) |
| Amount | £6,499,212 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/J500847/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2011 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Title | The ReDAPT Tidal Project Metocean Data Collection |
| Description | Improved understanding of the dynamics of tidal currents and oceanic waves and their complex interaction is a prerequisite for an economically viable tidal energy industry: complex velocity fields drive structural loads which affect device design, reliability and ultimately energy conversion rate. This Collection contains environmental data, primarily tidal flows, acquired during the 5 year £13M ETI ReDAPT Tidal Project. It has been supplemented by data measured as part of FlowBEC. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The database has been instrumental in developments for the EU H2020 funded RealTide and ResourceCode projects. A fully searchable version of the database is being developed and will form the basis of a library of met-ocean data from several locations. |
| URL | https://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/2328 |
| Title | The Wind and Tidal Turbine Embedded Simulator (WATTES) |
| Description | WATTES is a software library that was first developed any Heriot-Watt University and which has been augmented as part of this project. The library allows models of horizontal axis wind and tidal turbines to be embedded in computational fluid dynamics solvers. The library makes use of the blade element momentum theory and aerodynamic data for the turbine blade sections to calculate both the forces acting on the fluid and the torque and thrust acting on both the main shaft and blades of the turbine. Combining this with a model of the drive train allows a fully dynamic simulation, with active blade pitch control, to be performed. The code is written in Fortran-95. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | WATTES allows turbine models to be embedded into any 3D Navier-Stokes flow solver by coupling the library to the user source term routines. |
| URL | https://github.com/wattes |