We are delighted to launch and invite you to participate in the Supergen ORE Hub Tidal Turbine Benchmarking Project opening workshop, taking place online on Thursday 30 June 2022, 11:00 – 13:00 BST.

About the Tidal Benchmarking Project

The Tidal Turbine Benchmarking Project is a community project through which we are seeking to benchmark and improve mathematical and engineering models for blade fluid mechanics and loading of tidal stream turbines in steady and unsteady flows.

The Universities of Oxford, Hull, Manchester and Bath have developed and tested a highly instrumented tidal turbine in a range of well-defined flow conditions including turbulent flows and waves. The 1.6m diameter rotor is instrumented with in-blade strain gauges and fibre Bragg sensors providing spanwise bending moment distributions, as well as rotor speed, torque and thrust.

We invite modellers from across the ORE community, both academia and industry, to participate in the next phase of the project which is to predict the loading experienced by the turbine blades across a range of flow conditions. We will run several rounds of blind benchmarking through 2022-23 with each round culminating in a workshop and full release of turbine data to assist in future modelling exercises. Once complete all data from the turbine experiments will be made open access.

We would like to encourage the participation of a wide range of modelling methodologies from reduced order engineering models through to highly resolved CFD. The objective is not to determine that one model is better than another, but, through careful comparison to detailed high quality experimental data, to collectively understand the relative strengths and weaknesses, computational cost, errors and limitations of the different modelling approaches.

Workshop details

The workshop will release geometry data and test conditions, including providing instructions on how to participate, including the data deliverables for participation in the blind prediction exercises.

  • Thursday 30 June 2022
  • Location: Online (further details will be sent to you once you have registered)
  • Time: 11:00 – 13:00 BST

Please email Professor Richard Willden, University of Oxford, at richard.willden@eng.ox.ac.uk to register and receive a meeting invite. Early indication of attendance would be appreciated.

Further details including an agenda can be found in the event flyer here. We look forward to your participation in this activity.

Funding acknowledgement

This project is being funded jointly by Professor Richard Willden's EPSRC Fellowship EP/R007322/1 and The EPSRC Supergen ORE Hub EP/S000747/1.

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