Investigation of a Novel Approach for Ocean Current Power Generation: The Inclined-Axis Coaxial Turbine

The feasibility and performance of a tethered coaxial system is investigated to understand changes in power production with perturbation. Our results suggest that the power extracted from an ocean current by a tethered coaxial system is insensitive to attitude perturbation within a range of inclination to the flow. Flow domains and design parameters have been optimized to come up with a wide range of operating parameters resulting in a higher power extraction compared to a traditional horizontal axis single rotor system. We report our results and suggest future work.