Minimisation of the offshore wind and tidal turbine acoustic footprint on marine life

Introduction

For renewable energies to be sustainable in the future, their impact and harmful effects on the environment should be minimal. Recent evidence suggests that offshore wind and tidal turbines can have an acoustic damaging impact on marine life, due to the sustained generation of noise, which propagates very efficiently underwater.

Project Overview

Off-coustics combines numerical simulations and experiments to provide insights into the physics governing the aero/hydro-acoustic generation and propagation for offshore wind and tidal farms. Control of these physics will enable the design of silent offshore farms, enabling renewable energy with zero acoustic impact.

Methodology

1. Development of Solver
   I propose to develop a novel aero/hydro-acoustic solver, blending advanced high-order numerical techniques through machine learning and trained with experiments, to simulate flow-acoustic signatures for wind and tidal turbines in realistic offshore environments (including bathymetry, air-water surface, etc.).

2. Experimental Campaign
   An experimental campaign will generate aero/hydro-acoustic data for scaled turbines and farms to help elucidate the physics governing offshore acoustics and to guide/validate the flow-acoustic simulator.

3. Characterisation of Turbines
   Simulations and experiments will be combined to characterise turbines in complex offshore environments and to develop physics-informed surrogate models.

4. Design Proposals
   Using the developed surrogate models and optimisation, Off-coustics will propose new designs of silent farms that minimise the acoustic impact while ensuring energy production.

Expected Outcomes

Major advances in multidisciplinary aspects are expected, including:

• Fluid mechanics
• Numerical simulations
• Optimisation
• Experimental acoustics
• Aero/hydro-acoustics
• Offshore wind and tidal turbine physics