• Dr. Ye Li
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
  • 221 Randolph Hall
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Alan Brown

The mechanism of fluid structure interaction is important to many applications. In ocean engineering applications, many existing numerical methods/theories are developed based on assumptions derived from 1) underwater objectives with high speed active rotation (e.g., propellers) and 2) floating objects whose sizes are either comparable to wave length (e.g., ships) or much smaller than wave length (e.g., pipeline). They are, however, not appropriate for studying ocean energy devices, as the underpinning assumptions are not applicable to ocean energy devices. Given significant demand of developing ocean energy devices, it is crucial to study and understand their fundamental mechanism of fluid structure interaction.

In this work, systematic numerical and experimental investigations are carried out to understand the fundamental mechanism of fluid structure interaction’s impact on the performance and reliability of ocean energy devices. First, a study on tidal current turbine will be presented. A potential flow based numerical method is developed, and validated with towing tank tests. The method is used to study the performance, reliability and environmental impacts of a tidal current turbine and multiple turbines array. Particularly, it is found that multiple-turbine system has unique advantages by utilizing hydrodynamic interactions between turbines. Second, a floating-point-absorber study will be presented. It is found that viscous effect become dominant when the absorber’s scale is large. Finally, a large picture of the impact of ocean energy systems on the society will be reviewed with a cost analysis.