Abstract
The ocean current energy is plentiful on the coastline of Taiwan. The conversion effect of a current turbine is the important issue in application. The purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of a vertical axis turbine consisting of deflectable blades applied in ocean current energy conversion. The detailed flow field analyses and the characteristics of the turbine are investigated numerically. Finally, the performance and optimal prediction of the turbine are obtained. The variable blades could increase the torque and decrease the resistance of the vertical axis turbine. The commercial code ANSYS-Fluent CFD is employed to simulate and calculate the performance of the novel vertical axis turbine. The results of the velocity contours of calculation domain are reported. Furthermore, the torque and power coefficient of the vertical axis turbine at various rotation angle are obtained. The maximum power coefficient and the corresponding optimal tip speed ratio are also reported numerically