The Integrated Collision Detection and Mitigation project explores mitigation strategies for possible collision risk associated with marine energy turbine technologies. The speed of tidal turbines is affected by the velocity of the flowing water. The motion of a turbine can also be changed by a controller, which can increase or decrease torque to the motor and change the speed of the rotation to optimize power output. If a marine animal approaches the turbine, the controller could theoretically also be used to slow down the blades and mitigate potentially injurious or harmful collisions, which is Triton’s aim with the Integrated Collision Detection and Mitigation project. 

Strain gauges have been integrated into turbine blades to monitor the structural health of the device by measuring pressure, resistance, weight, and tension as indicators of mechanical stress on the system. With this project, the team is researching how these strain gauges could also be used to detect a marine mammal collision. A strain gauge could detect an interaction with a marine mammal, or more minor differences caused by the animal’s movement in the surrounding area, triggering the turbine to slow down to decrease the impact of a collision or even avoid interaction altogether.  

To understand whether this is possible, the team is collaborating with the University of Washington to run scaled experiments in a flume to test strain gauge sensitivities and determine whether or not early detection is feasible. Flumes are constructed channels in laboratories where water can flow through in a controlled environment. For these studies, the flume simulates a tidal channel, and a turbine prototype will be placed in its path. During experiments, instrumented animal models will be placed in the channel moved through the channel to evaluate how well strain gauges on the turbine blades can detect collision and whether it is possible to slow the turbine blade speed in response.