Development and Assessment of Performance Prediction Tools for Wind and Tidal Turbines

The development of theoretical and computational models to predict the power output of turbines designed for energy production from marine currents and winds is addressed. The experience matured at INSEAN, the Italian Ship Model Basin, in developing and validating computational tools suitable for preliminary-design and multidisciplinary studies of both horizontal-axis and vertical-axis turbines is presented. The emphasis is on fluid-dynamics modelling through a boundary integral equation method valid for three-dimensional bodies in arbitrarily non-uniform freestream flows. Phenomenology aspects characterizing operating conditions of horizontal-axis and vertical-axis wind/tidal turbines and related modelling issues are analysed. An overview of numerical results by computational models compared with existing experimental data is presented.