Battelle Memorial Institute, under U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830 to operate the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), agreed to provide technology assistance to the Percheron Power LLC in accordance with Small Business Vouchers Pilot Program Agreement project number 68798. This agreement was designed to provide assistance to the Percheron Power LLC in performing modeling and simulations for the design and optimization of fiberglass composite-based Archimedes hydrodynamic screw (AHS) turbines.
This report documents the technical assistance provided to Percheron Power in developing testing and manufacturing of fiberglass composite AHS turbines. PNNL provided assistance mainly through computational modeling and physical-model testing support. The analysis documented in this report used advanced computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modelling to predict the performance of various turbine designs and parameters affecting their performance. The CFD analysis was later integrated with modern finite element analysis (FEA) to determine the optimal geometry and material requirements for specific turbine designs. Structural FEA was also conducted to address design and material-specific requirements such as blade root configuration, root anchoring requirements, cyclic loading potential, fiber orientation, and design-specific composite material mass. While the initial intent of this support was to develop an optimal composite AHS turbine design with strake-profiled blades for better performance, results from the modeling in conjunction with Percheron Power testing indicated that the a helicoid profile was cost -effective and preferable for the full-scale prototype testing when overall performance, material requirement, and the associated cost of manufacturing are considered.