The Blade Design of a Bionic Shark Fin Airfoil for a Horizontal Axis Tidal Current Turbine
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 6
Abstract
The horizontal axis tidal turbine is a typical apparatus to capture the energy in the ocean, but most traditional design methods of a turbine blade have led to the inefficiency of turbines. Therefore, to improve turbine efficiency, a design methodology of a horizontal axis tidal turbine blade based on bionics research is presented in this work. First, the point cloud of fin samples was scanned and processed. The three-dimensional digital models of pectoral and causal fins were extracted by reverse engineering software. Then, the bionic airfoil blade model was obtained through parameter optimization and coordinate transformation and a shark fin airfoil blade based on the bionic principle was designed, which provided a new method for the turbine blade design. Finally, the hydrodynamic performance of the bionic airfoil turbines at different pitch angles was studied through numerical simulations and underwater experiments, and the results showed that the performance of bionic airfoil turbines designed in this paper was better than that of the traditional blade turbines.
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Data Availability Statement
The following data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request:
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The model results for the shark pectoral and caudal fins of Zhang et al. (2019).
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The model of the hydroturbine impeller.
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The results of the numerical simulation of the alterable pitch hydroturbine.
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The results of the correlation between the power coefficient and the blade pitch angle.
Acknowledgments
This research is sponsored by State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Grant No. 1301).
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Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 6 • December 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 26, 2021
Accepted: Aug 24, 2021
Published online: Sep 30, 2021
Published in print: Dec 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Feb 28, 2022
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Cited by
- Kaisheng Zhang, Jing Li, Zhen Gao, Baocheng Zhang, Design and performance evaluation of bionics-based combined blade for horizontal axis tidal current hydroturbine, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, 10.1063/5.0100509, 14, 5, (054501), (2022).