About
Rodolfo’s research focus is on tidal turbines for renewable energy. In particular, experiments focus on the enhanced performance of the turbines with the addition of forward-facing winglets or mounted as a tidal array. There is a fully instrumented turbine that is used for the experiments, it measures the torque and thrust at the hub (before the mechanical and electric losses). At the moment a second turbine is being instrumented, and a third one is also being built to act as a dummy for the array. The frame for the turbines was designed using aluminium profiles, and the tests run at the Tow Tank in B185 at Boldrewood Campus that was recently opened (early 2022).