Abstract
Floating tidal turbine systems have seen increasing popularity in recent years with floating devices designed to reduce installation and maintenance costs. This paper investigates whether the necessary buoyancy aids can also be used as a tidal fence sidewall to improve the hydrodynamic performance of the turbines. Following a numerical design process, an experimental investigation was undertaken at the SSPA towing tank test facility supported through a MaRINET2 facilities access grant. The testing analysed the effect of deploying a sidewall adjacent to a four-turbine fence. Analysis of the performance data demonstrated that the sidewall produced a marginal increase in overall power output with the outboard turbine achieving an improvement in power output and the inboard turbine experiencing a reduction. This result suggests that an appropriately designed sidewall could be used to aid in balancing load and power production across a turbine fence, equalising the fatigue damage between turbines.