Oscillating-foil hydrokinetic turbines have gained interest over the years to extract energy from renewable sources. The influence of the sweep angle on the performance of a fully-passive oscillating-plate hydrokinetic turbine prototype was investigated experimentally in the present work. The sweep angle was introduced to promote spanwise flow along the plate in order to manipulate the leading edge vortex (LEV) and hydrodynamically optimize the performance of the turbine. In the present work, flat plates of two configurations were considered: a plate with a 6° sweep angle and an unswept plate (control), which were undergoing fully-passive pitch and heave motions in uniform inflow at the Reynolds numbers ranging from 15 000 to 30 000. The resulting kinematic parameters and the energy extraction performance were evaluated for both plates. Planar (2D) particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to obtain patterns of the phase-averaged out-of-plane vorticity during the oscillation cycle. The circulation in the wake was then related to the induced-forces on the plate by calculating the moments of vorticity of the LEV with respect to the pitching axis of the plate. Tomographic (3D) PIV was implemented in evaluating the influence of the spanwise flow on the dynamics of the vortex structure in three-dimensional space. The rate of deformation of the vortex length was quantified by calculating the deformation terms embedded in the vorticity equations, then linked to the stability of the vortex. The results show evidence of delay of the shedding of LEV and increased vortex stability, in the case of the swept plate. The manipulation of the LEV by the spanwise flow was related to the induced kinematics exhibited by the prolonged heave forces experienced by the swept plate, which led to the higher power extraction performance at high inflow velocities. In the presence of spanwise flow, positive vortex stretching along the vortex line increased the stabilization of the vortex core and prevented the onset of helical vortex breakdown, observed in the case of the unswept plate. The use of the sweep profile on the plate has led to the improvement of energy extraction performance of the fully-passive hydrokinetic turbine. / Graduate

Le contrôle des tourbillons de sillages d'aéronefs permet de réduire leur dangerosité et d'augmenter par conséquent le débit de décollages et d'atterrissages dans les aéroports. Ce contrôle permettrait également d'agir sur la formation des rainées de condensation et des cirrus artificiels en haute atmosphère dans le but de réduire le forçage radiatif terrestre causé par l'aviation. Brion (2014) ont montré par analyse de stabilité modale que le dipôle de Lamb-Chaplygin, souvent utilisé comme un modèle représentatif des tourbillons de sillage en champ lointain, est bidimensionnellement instable à des nombres de Reynolds faibles. Nous étendons premièrement cette analyse de stabilité modale bidimensionnelle à des modèles de dipôles plus réalistes, pour une large gamme de rapport d'aspect, et obtenons, à faibles nombre de Reynolds, des instabilités de même nature (modes de déplacement) que pour le dipôle de Lamb-Chaplygin. Nous montrons cependant que la croissance des instabilités observées dépend fortement du rapport d'aspect du dipôle, et que cette croissance est fortement diminuée lorsque la diffusion du dipôle est prise en compte. Nous étudions ensuite la stabilité bidimensionnelle transitoire en champ lointain (dipôles) et en champ proche (nappes de vorticité), en atmosphères homogène et stratifiée. Dans tous les cas, les perturbations optimales sont des spirales de vorticité orientées à contre-cisaillement et situées en périphérie des tourbillons, qui conduisent in fine aux instabilités écrites par l'analyse modale grâce à un mécanisme de contamination du cœur des tourbillons, initialement identifié par Antkowiak & Brancher 2004 sur un tourbillon isolé. / Aircraft wake vortex control allows for reducing of their dangerousness and consequently improve airport take-off / landing requencies. Contrails and artificial cirrus clouds formation could also be influenced through this control of wake vortices and allow for reducing of terrestrial radiative forcing generated by aviation. Brion (2014) have shown by a modal stability analysis that the Lamb-Chaplygin dipole, often used as a far-field model for aircraft wake vortices, is unstable to two-dimensional perturbations at Iow Reynolds numbers. We first extend this twodimensional modal stability analysis to more realistic dipole models, for a Wide range of aspect ratios, and obtain, for Iow Reynolds numbers, instabilities of the same nature (displacement modes) as for the Lamb-Chaplygin dipole. However, we show that the growth of those modes depends greatly on the dipole aspect ratio, and that this growth is greatly diminished hen the dipole diffusion is taken into account. We then study two-dimensional transient growth for far-field models (dipoles) and near-field models (vorticity sheets), in homogeneous and stratified atmospheres. ln all cases, optimal perturbations are vorticity spirals oriented against shear and located at the periphery of the vortices, which eventually lead to development of the instabilities described in the modal analysis through a contamination mechanism of the vortex cores, initially identified by Antkowiak & Brancher (2004) for an isolated vortex.