Kamarul Tawi - Marine Technology Centre, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Omar Yaakob - Marine Technology Centre, UTM
Dedy Triawan Sunanto - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

The Ocean has provided a new avenue in the quest for renewable energy. One potentialsource of energy is marine current, which is harnessed using either vertical or horizontal axis turbines.This paper describes a particular type of vertical axis turbine which is suitable for low current velocityapplications. The simulation of Savonius-type turbine, which hitherto has never been proposed formarine current energy application, is presented in this paper. A ۳D computational model was builtand analyzed using a Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis using proprietary software. The overlapratio is identified as one of the important factors in Savonius turbine performance. This paperprovides results of the investigation for a range of overlap ratios between ۰.۱ and ۰.۶ and it was foundthat the maximum torque can be obtained at overlap ratio of ۰.۲۱.

overlap ratio, Savonius, Simulation, Computational Fluids Dynamic (CFD)