On the Cutting Edge of Tidal Blade Design and Materials

To boost the competitiveness of tidal energy, the NEMMO project aims at optimising tidal turbine blade design and performance by making a larger, lighter, and more durable composite blade for floating tidal turbines.

This project, now in its third year, has already made great progress in testing and producing tailored composites, coatings and appendages for a novel tidal blade. This side event will highlight the latest findings on materials and modelling and the results they have achieved.

This side event will cover the following topics:

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for simulating tidal turbine cavitation
• Cavitation testing for tidal blades design
• Increase of blades strength by means of adding carbon nanoparticles included in composite formulation
• Biomimetic texturing as an effective antifouling solution
• Antifouling coatings as an effective antifouling method for tidal blades
• Accelerated ageing test to reproduce the degradation of composite material in sea water