Performance simulation of water turbines by using 6-DoF UDF and sliding mesh methods

In this work, a comparison between the six degrees of freedom (6-DoF) method and the sliding mesh approach in computational fluid dynamics simulations of an Archimedes screw turbine for hydrokinetic applications was performed using ANSYs Fluent software. The numerical curves obtained by representing the power coefficient () values versus the tip speed ratio ( or ) were compared based on the experimental data available in the literature. Therefore, by considering the  values as the comparison benchmark parameter between the numerical and experimental data, the error obtained when using the 6-DoF method and the sliding mesh approach was 13% and 40%, respectively. Both methods allowed the simulation of the rotor rotation, although the 6-DoF method was more accurate in the prediction of the turbine performance, higher computational resources were consumed in comparison with the sliding mesh method, which allows to obtain a computational solution in affordable times.