Développements numériques pour la modélisation du comportement et du sillage d'hydroliennes

Developments of new marine current turbines farm are subject to a better understanding of interactions effects between the turbines. Experimental trials have been realised in the wave and current flume of IFREMER Boulogne-sur-Mer, on a three bladed horizontal axis marine current turbine in order to characterise the elementary interaction between two turbines aligned with the current. At the same time, a three-dimensional numerical software has been developed in order to model the flow behind a marine current turbine. The software is based on a Lagrangian Vortex Method. It enables to evaluate the forces and moments onto the rotor as well as the flow fields around the turbine. Most of the previous numerical studies regarding interaction between devices only consider a single turbine, inflow conditions issuing from a previous and separated computation. Other typical interaction studies deals with real interaction between devices but in the porous disk approximation. The present numerical software really considers a marine current turbines farm by its own. First validations results on devices interactions are presented.