| Abstract |
The Performance Assessment of Wave and Tidal Array Systems (PerAWaT) project, launched in October 2009 with £8m of ETI investment. The project delivered validated, commercial software tools capable of significantly reducing the levels of uncertainty associated with predicting the energy yield of major wave and tidal stream energy arrays. It also produced information that will help reduce commercial risk of future large scale wave and tidal array developments.
This document outlines the method adopted to evaluate the spatial flow field at a site location, for use within the TidalFarmer suite of tools. GH will not develop its own flow solver, but will instead develop links with existing codes. The model will provide the 2-d spatial variation of the flow speed and direction across the site, and this will be developed into 3-d in the vicinity of the array using standard boundary layer theory. Perturbations will be applied to the flow field through the wake and blockage models, to determine the effects of energy extraction.
This report describes the requirements of the flow field model for this application, and reviews existing packages based on these requirements. The reasons for the selection of the preferred solutionare given. GH’s general modelling philosophy and the approach to this specific task is discussed, followed by the justification for this method and the theory and methodology behind it.
The method of integration within TidalFarmer is discussed briefly. However, the model will be run externally to the base module of the TidalFarmer tool, and hence the level of integration required is minimal.
Following on from this deliverable, testing of a working method through tool beta testing and the development of a protocol for interfacing with an existing shallow water solver were developed. |
