Abstract
The paper presents results of a validation study in which predictions of a 3-D Computational Fluid Dynamics model of a tidal turbine are compared with scale laboratory experiments on a turbine of identical geometry; the thrust and power coefficients predicted by the model are compared to those that were observed in the experiments, for a range of Tip Speed Ratios and rotor pitch angles. The level of agreement is generally good, and it is suggested that the occurrence of cavitation in the experiments is the reason for which the agreement is less good at high Tip Speed Ratios. The results of mesh resolution and time-step convergence studies are also included.