A feasibility study for establishing a design tool for floating tidal energy system

在过去的十年中，潮汐流能源转换器已经成为可再生能源研发的主要焦点，许多涡轮机农场现在处于规划和开发阶段。大多数现有的潮汐能装置设计利用海底安装的涡轮能量转换器。然而，就其安装和维护成本而言，这些水下装置在经济和技术可行性方面存在许多挑战。近年来，人们正在研制一种浮式潮汐能装置。这种装置的安装包括单个或多个涡轮机，安装在一个浮动平台上，用系泊绳锚定在海床上。中英两国的研究和工业团队已经在模型规模和全尺寸浮动潮汐能转换器上进行了多次演示。与固定涡轮机相比，所有的结果都增加了其技术可行性和成本效益的可信度。尽管浮式潮汐能涡轮机（FTCT）相对于固定式潮汐能涡轮机具有优势，但现有的设计指南被认为还没有为商业市场做好准备。关键的挑战包括保证支撑平台和浮式系泊线的安全性，大型转子在极端海况下的生存能力，正确选址的准确评估以及可靠的环境影响评估。现有的工业设计工具非常依赖于简化模型或单个组件设计规则，这对能源提取过程/数量/供应产生了负面影响。拟议的项目旨在将英国斯特拉斯克莱德大学在海上可再生能源和浮式海上结构领域已经开展的工作与(a)中国哈尔滨工程大学在浮式潮汐涡轮机领域和(b)中国海洋大学在潮汐资源和环境影响评估领域进行的工作结合起来。本研究的主要目的是通过数值框架与实验对比和验证，探索一种综合方法是否可行，以更好地理解与耦合漂浮潮汐能系统相关的基础物理。这可能会为未来商业化的ftct和其他浮动海洋能源装置提供更准确的工业设计指南。

In the past decade, tidal stream energy converters have become a major focus for renewable energy R&D with a number of turbine farms now in its planning and development phase. The majority of existing designs for tidal energy devices utilize sea-bed mounted turbine energy converters. These underwater devices however present many challenges related to economic and technical viability in terms of their installations and maintenances cost. In recent years, a floating type tidal energy device is being developed. The installation of such a device comprises of single or multiple turbines mounted on a floating platform anchored to the sea-bed with mooring lines. Research and industry teams in China and UK have presented multiple demonstrations both on a model scale and a full scale floating tidal energy converter. All of the results add credibility to their technical feasibility and cost effective nature as compared to fixed turbines. Despite the advantages of floating tidal current turbines (FTCT) over their fixed counterparts, the existing design guidance is not deemed to be ready for the commercial market. The key challenges include guaranteeing the safety of supporting platform and floating mooring lines, the survivability of large scale rotor under extreme sea conditions, the accurate assessment for the proper site selection and the reliable evaluation of environmental impacts. Existing industry design tools rely very much on the simplified models or individual component design rules which negatively impact the energy extraction process/amount/supply. The proposed project aims to integrate the work already carried out at University of Strathclyde in UK in the field of offshore renewable energy and floating offshore structure with the work performed at (a) Harbin Engineering University in China in the area of floating tidal turbine and (b) Ocean University of China in China in the field of tidal resources and environment impacts assessment. The main goal of the proposed research is to explore whether an integrated method is feasible to better understand the fundamental physics associated with a coupled floating tidal energy system through numerical framework with experimental comparisons and validations. This would then potentially provide more accurate industry design guidelines for the future commercialized FTCTs and other floating marine energy devices.