TY - CONF
TI - Tidal turbine collision assessment using the bulk and shear modulus of marine mammals' soft tissue
AU - Grear, M
AU - Motley, M
T2 - 12th European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC 2017)
C1 - Cork, Ireland
AB - As new renewable energy devices are installed, the environmental impacts must be evaluted. The spinning blades of tidal turbines can potentially injure marine mammals through collision and this risk must be evaluated prior to installing tidal energy. One of the obstacles to fully understanding the effects of turbine impact on these animals is proper modeling of the biological materials. This work aims to develop techniques to improve the understanding of how marine mammal skin and blubber responds to trauma through improved material testing so that the risk of injury from various tidal turbine blade designs can be evaluated. Previous and ongoing work has focused on the tensile elastic modulus for these two tissues which can be overly simplistic. In addition to tensile stiffness properties, testing the bulk and shear moduli in these viscoelastic materials can improve our prediction of injury. Bulk and shear modulus testing were designed based on a review of existing methods for soil science, biotechnology, and more traditional metal methodologies. Adding material properties of skin and blubber also allows a deeper understanding of similarities between marine mammal species. The shear modulus can show how the material responds to the torsional forces applied by the blade or from the animal's forward velocity, while the bulk modulus can refine the model and give a more accurate measurement of Poisson's ratio and compressive response. Assessing the similarities between marine mammals can allow for modeling simplification, as one model may be sufficient for multiple species in evaluating the severity of a tidal turbine collision.
DA - 2017/08//
PY - 2017
PB - European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference 2017
UR - https://ewtec.org/proceedings/
LA - English
KW - Tidal
KW - Safety and Security
ER -