Near wake flow field measurements of a marine current turbine: Preliminary results

More advanced simulation tools are required to predict the loads experienced by a turbine in situ due to the surrounding environment including the effects of inflow turbulence, the impact of turbines operating upstream, the effect of the free surface, and the impact of surface waves, to name a few. These advanced models require detailed data sets for validation. At this time, few studies have focused on the near wake in an effort to provide such detailed data. It is critical to understand this region because it is where much of the high-energy phenomena occur that is most likely to impact turbine performance and reliability. To this end, a towing-tank particle image velocimetry (PIV) system was designed, built, and used to provide measurements of the flow in the near wake of a scale-independent marine current turbine. Included are preliminary results including a representative case and turbulent statistics for an ensemble of realizations.