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Experimental Research And Experimental Methods

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Experimental
To be competitive as renewable energy recourse turbines in wave energy generation must be robust and economical for a number of years. Approaches utilize experiments to characterize and predict the effect of parameters involved. One of which is advancements to turbine blades due to unsteady hydrodynamic loads. Characterizing these loads can determine their fatigue life and determine a more reliable material to be used for manufacturing the blades avoiding premature failure. Reliability is necessary due to most renewable wave energy devices are being placed in remote locations where it is not economical to maintain or replace failed hardware. Turbulent flow across the turbine blade creates moments and bending of the blades …show more content…

This loading in a circular motion is associated with yet another type of loading which is dynamic inflow.
The objective of recent experiments is to study and experimentally quantify the unsteady loads on a horizontal axis turbine blade from turbulent forces with similar operating conditions in which the boundary layer is maintained along the edges of the blades. Therefore a new data set was to be obtained providing bending moment responses to oscillatory frequencies and velocity amplitudes. By performing a series of multi-frequency and half sinusoidal experiments may demonstrate whether single frequency forcing could be applied to model these more general responses2. A recent article titled “Blade Loading on Tidal Turbines for Uniform Unsteady Flow2” performs the experiment with valid materials and methods in order to better predict this phenomenon of turbulent loads and fatigue life along with the results of the experiment.
Another recent experimental approach is decreasing cost per installed kilowatt. In order to utilize alternative energy such as wave energy it must be as cheap or as cost effective as current energy sources such as fossil fuels. Harnessing energy from alternative sources and then converting the energy into electrical energy would reduce the demand of current processes. Worldwide ocean power capacity is approximately 6 Megawatts and over the next few years it is projected to increase to 35 Megawatts3. For this reason

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