GH Bladed has provided an excellent basis for the development of a tidal current turbine design tool. Not only was the software developed with the quality assurance required of a certified design tool, but in addition many of the wind turbine related features and engineering models contained within the software could be directly applied or easily adapted to tidal current devices.
The development of the design tool for tidal current turbines involved the following stages:
- A requirements specification for the design tool was determined through consultation with the industry
- Appropriate engineering models were developed and implemented within the software
- Modification of the Graphical User Interface to include the facility to input parameters specific to tidal current turbines
- Thorough in house testing of the software
- Beta testing by tidal current turbine developers
- Validation of the software against model and full scale test data
The work is being partially supported by the UK DTI New and Renewable Energy Programme.
