Aerodyn's MHK features

[rquancard]

I am interested in modelling marine hydrokinetic turbines with OpenFAST and I saw a few indications here and there suggesting that it included the necessary features (especially Aerodyn's introduction documentation that presents the module as equally applicable to wind turbine aerodynamics and MHK hydrodynamics). However if I am not mistaken, the cavitation check was added but not the other features such as buoyant forces and the effect of added mass on the RNA, drag on the nacelle or the effect of waves in the flow seen by the rotor.

Is anyone working on this specific subject (or do those features already exist somewhere I didn't look) ?

[jjonkman]

Hi @rquancard,

NREL did develop a branch of FAST that included hydrodynamic added-mass effects on the rotor for marine hydrokinetic (MHK) turbines. You can read about this in the following article recently published in the Renewable Energy journal: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118304312. However, this branch was made from FAST v8.16 (and the work was done in parallel to the original OpenFAST transition) and the resources were not available at the time to merge this feature into OpenFAST. And NREL has not yet been funded to add buoyancy or other effects pertinent to MHK turbines. Funding is the big limitation here.

Best regards,