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Hydrodynamic Shape Optimization of Horizontal Axis Turbine for River and Marine Current Applications

The present paper proposes novel approach to shape optimization of small horizontal axis turbines, applicable to sites where conventional hydropower technology is not economically or technologically feasible. In addition, this turbine technology can be used to generate electricity from mostly untapped hydrokinetic energy contained in ocean waves, tides and currents. In spite of numerous advantages, the technology has not been fully commercialized yet, due to relatively low efficiency. Therefore, the idea of this approach is to optimize the rotor shape by using advanced optimization methods for hydrofoil design as well as for design and determination of other design parameters such as chord length and pitch angle distribution along the blade span. From hydrodynamic point of view, hydrofoils are very important individual blade elements that requires special attention during design process. Design method presented in this paper is optimization-based but at the same time highly computationally efficient. This is achieved by using single objective approximation of multi – objective optimization problems.

Blade element momentum theory ; design improvements ; hydrokinetic turbines ; hydrofoil optimization ; evolutionary algorithm

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