Design and Stability Analyses of Floating Tidal Current Power Generation Test Platform

Utilization of ocean tidal current, as a renewable energy, has attracted widespread attention of a number of research groups. In this paper, a floating tidal current power generation test platform to study flexible blades turbine, which is a novel ocean tidal current energy convert equipment, is designed. The modular design of the platform enables convenient operations in rotor replacement, parameter display and control, and automatic data collection. SESAM software is adopted to calculate the force and movement of the tidal power test platform under the resultant action of wind, wave, and tidal currents. The stability is analyzed to optimize the structure of the platform. Results show that the optimized model has good stability under the condition of a wind speed 20 m/s, wave height 3 m, and current velocity 2 m/s. The floating tidal current power generation test platform has also shown its availability under the above conditions when applying to real sea environment. The success in the performance of the sea trial prototype underscores the reliability and feasibility of our design.