Pneumatic performance of staggered impulse turbine for OWC wave energy convertor

A staggered impulse turbine is proposed for asymmetric air flows in Oscillating Water Column wave energy plants, which is expected to enhance the pneumatic power output in a wave cycle. The setting angle of rotor blades is set as 5°. The 3D numerical simulations were conducted under steady conditions using MRF and Mixing Plane model based on CFD software Fluent 12.0. Its mean efficiencies under different velocity amplitude ratios are studied using quasi-steady analysis, which derive corresponding data from the numerical simulation. It is found that the staggered turbine shows better performance than the conventional one under the asymmetrical air flows. Furthermore, its mean efficiency and output-work in a wave period are compared with another unsymmetrical twin impulse turbine system. The results show that the staggered turbine shows better output-work performance than the twin turbine system over the high flow coefficient domain (φ>0.7), which provides more choices to future research on turbine’s optimization.