Tidal Turbine Fish Strike & Sediment Wake Simulator

Tidal Flow

Peak flow speed 2.6 m/s

Time scale ×600

Turbine Array

Turbines in row 6

Blade tip-speed ratio (λ) 5.0

Fish Shoal

Avoidance behavior 0.60

Live Readouts

Flow velocity

0.0 m/s

Power output

0 kW

Strikes / hour (est.)

0.0

Max scour depth

0.0 cm

Fish in shoal

Blade tip speed

0.0 m/s

How it works

Flow follows a simplified M2 semi-diurnal tide, period T = 12.42 h, compressed by the time-scale slider so a full ebb/flood cycle plays out in seconds:

v(t) = v_max · sin(2π t / T)
P = ½ · ρ · A · v³ · Cp(λ)

Extractable power follows the standard turbine power equation (ρ = 1025 kg/m³ seawater, A = swept rotor area). The power coefficient Cp(λ) peaks near the Betz-limit-scaled optimum around λ ≈ 5–6 and falls off on either side — an idealized stand-in for real blade-element performance curves.

tip speed = λ · v(t)
strike risk ∝ (tip speed) · (1 − avoidance) · (fish passing near rotor)

Each fish instance runs simple flocking (cohesion + separation + alignment) plus a repulsion field around every turbine hub, scaled by the avoidance behavior slider — 0 means fish swim straight through the swept disc, 1 means they steer around it almost entirely. A fish that crosses close to a spinning rotor at high tip speed has an elevated strike probability each frame; strikes accumulate into the hourly-rate readout. The slow-rotation mitigation toggle halves the effective tip-speed ratio, trading roughly a quarter of the power output for a much lower strike rate — the same trade-off real tidal-turbine operators face near fish migration windows.

Downstream of each turbine, the wake reduces local flow velocity; a low-velocity wake lets suspended sediment settle (deposition), while the accelerated flow squeezing between rotors scours the seabed near the foundations. Both are modeled as a slowly-integrating height field sampled at each turbine's downstream and upstream faces, visualized as small mounds/pits on the seabed and summarized in the "Max scour depth" readout.

Fish shoal Turbine rotors Seabed scour / deposition

Tide: flood

⚠ Couldn't load the 3D engineThree.js failed to load from the CDN. Check your connection and reload.