Optimal distribution of riverine turbines in a linear array with systematic flow manipulation

Abstract eng:
Hydrokinetic turbine arrays must be optimized not only to extract the maximum power from the fluid flow, but also to reduce navigational and environmental impacts. We recently showed that an array with minimal footprint, oriented in-line with the river flow, could extract an order of magnitude higher power by deflecting the flow through the array at angle α. Here we derive the optimal distribution of turbines along such an array. For small α, corresponding to weak deflection, we find the turbines should ideally be distributed uniformly between recirculation zones at the edge of the array. The size of the recirculation zones depends on the strength of deflection. For α above ≈ 45◦ , the distribution deviates from uniform, with the downstream turbines generating almost twice the power per unit length compared to those upstream.

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