Thomas Lake

• PhD
• Research Officer at Swansea University

Marine renewable energy is a topic of growing interest in academic and commercial contexts, with a number of different devices and technologies under development and in various stages of consenting and deployment. One of the many challenges faced by this emerging industry lies in the understanding of the environment in which these devices are deplo...

As part of ongoing work to develop and validate a combined model for the behaviour and potential power generation of a floating tidal energy converter, the motion of a prototype device has been recorded over a two month testing period. The inputs from several types of sensor have been combined with GPS position information to improve accuracy of th...

The development of tidal energy converters, and particularly floating tidal energy converters, is an area of increased development in recent years. Testing of a floating tidal energy device over winter 2017/18 led to an opportunity to record and examine strain of a full scale composite turbine blade under operational conditions, with comparison of...

Traditional Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) instruments measure marine flow velocities along diverging acoustic beams. This allows estimation of approximate mean velocity and turbulence at a point between the beams. Alternatively, a converging beam instrument can measure velocity components at a single point and hence provide a higher qual...

Tidal resource assessment for the characterisation of turbine performance or Annual Energy Prediction currently uses the method of bins as recommended by international standards. An alternative method is proposed in this paper and applied to the Sustainable Marine Energy PLAT-I deployment in Connel Sound, Scotland. This method may be suitable for t...

Natural Rubber are typically subjected to high cyclic loading conditions during their service lives necessitating the importance of developing multifunctional rubbers with appropriate performance under alternating loading. Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) were extensively used to tailor mechanical properties of rubbers while their performances are severely...

A system for generating renewable energy from fast flowing rivers has been designed in a previous project. It uses a purely mechanical system to pump pressurised water to shore. Here we describe the development of a 0.9m version of this system, designed for installation in a tidal estuary. The system is fully instrumented to allow power take off an...

Axial flow hydro-kinetic turbines convert the kinetic energy of a flowing fluid into electrical energy, and can be designed for deployment in a wide range of locations. As relatively recent technology, these designs are often high in cost, complex, and require specialist maintenance and materials. This is not viable for many communities in developi...

Numerical models are used for design and evaluation of tidal energy converters, helping to increase their appeal as significant contributors in the generation of low carbon energy. In this study, we quantify the improvement in predicted structural load variability achieved by incorporating more detailed consideration of foil shape and Reynolds effe...

Tidal energy converters have the potential to become significant contributors in the generation of low carbon energy. Operational cost, driven mostly by planned and unplanned maintenance, is one of the most significant barrier limiting their widespread adoption. Accurate numerical models can be used to predict structural loads and help improve thei...

With a growing range of floating tidal energy converters being developed, tested and deployed the SURFTEC project aimed to measure and model the motion of this type of device. Part of this work included the design and development of a relatively low cost data logging and motion sensing system, deployed on a test device at two sites between 2017 and...

Tidal resource assessment for the characterisation of turbine performance or Annual Energy Prediction currently uses the method of bins as recommended by international standards. An alternative method is proposed in this paper and applied to the Sustainable Marine Energy PLAT-I deployment in Connel Sound, Scotland. This method may be suitable for t...

Cost, driven mostly by planned and unplanned maintenance, is the most significant barrier limiting widespread adoption of TECs. Accurate numerical models can be used to predict the structural loads on TECs and help improve their reliability. BEMT offers an efficient method for predicting the performance of TECs. A robust but unoptimized BEMT code,...

As part of the EPSRC SURFTEC project, measurements of the motion of a floating tidal energy converter alongside measurements of turbine performance and flow conditions are required to validate planned improvements to an existing BEMT model. Measurements have been acquired from a commercial prototype device during a test deployment using low cost co...

The main function of a marine renewable energy device is to remove energy from a marine environment and transform it into (generally) electrical energy for further use. This has potential for environmental benefits in the form of reducing global carbon emissions, but also has the potential for impact on the local ecology. Using computer models and...

Assessing the environmental impacts of a project are often an important requirement of the planning and consenting process for a marine energy device deployment. Computer simulations are frequently used in other areas of marine energy development, and Individual Based Models (IBMs) provide one method for simulating marine life in order to investiga...

Individual Based Models (IBMs) provide a way of taking simple rules and principles and simulating the movement and interaction of living creatures with each other and/or the environment around them. These models have been used to investigate habitat use and movements of a variety of animals, including both marine and terrestrial mammals, fish and b...

Individual Based Models (IBMs) can be used to investigate emergent behaviours of groups and flocks of animals. Early uses of IBMs showed plausible looking behaviours emerging from simple rules and were used in computer generated animations and images. This type of model has since seen use simulating behaviours of a range of animals ranging from cla...