Numerical Analysis of Vertical Axis Water Current Turbines Equipped with a Channelling Device
The general context of the present thesis is renewable energies within the HARVEST program initialized at LEGI laboratory, which consists in developing a Darrieus-type water current turbine (WCT). The WTC can be equipped with a channelling device which allows transforming a bigger amount of the kinetic energy contained in the flowstream into electricity. The present work is focused on the channelling devices. Studies concern three main topics: the explanation of the channelling device hydrodynamic functioning, the evaluation of the performance of the shrouded WCT and the revealing of the system geometrical parameters which allow its improvement or optimisation. All studies have been carried out by 2D RANS calculations and available experimental data, and have been compared to bare WTC results.