French waters have a strong potential for tidal turbines applications. In these areas of strong currents, intense velocity fluctuations are observed in the water column. They ultimately come from variations in seabed bathymetry and can have a strong impact on tidal turbine energy production and fatigue. In order to understand the turbulent structures generation in the wake of obstacles and to build a data base for future numerical studies, the Alderney Race conditions are reproduced experimentally, in a wave and current tank, in Froude similitude and with a Reynolds number as high as possible. In this study, real bathymetric variations are represented using canonical elements : a cube, a cylinder, an inclined plane or a combination of all three. Cases with... |