ABSTRACT

DESIGN AND SIMULATION OF A RIVERINE HYDROKINETIC TURBINE

MURATOĞLU, Abdullah

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering

Supervisor:  Assist. Prof. Dr. M. İshak YÜCE

December 2014

212 pages

 

Hydrokinetic turbines are electromechanical devices that convert kinetic energy inside the flowing water into electricity without requiring water head. There are many different designs of large scale hydrokinetic turbines for tidal applications, however little efforts have been made on small scale river turbines. In the present study a fixed speed, stall regulated, riverine hydrokinetic turbine rotor (TIGRIS-27H) has been designed and simulated. The blades were optimized by genetic algorithm. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been conducted using ANSYS CFX software.  The simulation results of power, torque and thrust have been found to be in a very good agreement with the theoretical design parameters. TIGRIS-27H is a 3 bladed horizontal axis hydrokinetic turbine rotating at 45 rpm and generates up to 27 kW power at the rated velocity of 2.7 m/s with an average power coefficient of 0.43.

 

Key Words: Renewable energy, hydrokinetic turbine, rotor design, river flow, CFD simulation, ANSYS CFX.