Bio-inspired morphing blades for wind and tidal turbines

Airborne and aquatic lifeforms have developed numerous ways of optimising movement in the fluids they inhabit, with adopting shape-adaptive bodies has been one solution to mitigating loads caused by unsteady nature of winds and water currents. Sharing the same operating environments wind and tidal turbines are also subject to the same flow fluctuations which affect the amount of power extractable from the fluid and reduce potential lifetimes of devices due to extra loading. Following successful demonstrations of reducing tidal turbine loads by implementing flexible components in turbine blades this project aims to further investigate and develop the concept of passively-adaptive blades for potential use in tidal and wind power devices.