Experimental Study of Darrieus Turbines in Confined Free-Surface Flows

Abstract

Both scientific and industrial communities have a growing interest for marine renewable energies. There is a wide variety of technologies in this domain, with different degrees of maturity. Our work focuses on two models of an H-type vertical axis Darrieus (1931) tidal turbine with the objective of studying the effect of fluid-structure interactions on their performances. The
experimental studies were carried out on the 15m long and 1m² square section free surface channel of the Environmental Hydrodynamics Platform at PPRIME Institute (Figure 1). The maximum flow discharge through the channel is Q = 500 l/s.