Minimisation of the offshore wind and tidal turbine acoustic footprint on marine life

For renewable energies to be sustainable in the future, their impact and harmful effects on the environment should be minimum.

Recent evidences suggest that offshore wind and tidal turbines can have an acoustic damaging impact on marine life, due to the sustained generation of noise, which propagates very efficiently underwater.Off-coustics combines numerical simulations and experiments to provide insights into the physics governing the aero/hydro-acoustic generation and propagation for offshore wind and tidal farms.

Control of these physics will enable the design of silent offshore farms enabling renewable energy with zero acoustic impact.

First, I propose to develop a novel aero/hydro-acoustic solver, blending advanced high order numerical techniques through machine learning and trained with experiments, to simulate flow-acoustic signatures for wind and tidal turbines, in realistic offshore environments (including bathymetry, air-water surface, etc.).

Second, an experimental campaign will generate aero/hydro-acoustic data for scaled turbines and farms to help elucidate the physics governing offshore acoustics and to guide/validate the flow-acoustic simulator.

Third, simulations and experiments will be combined to characterise turbines in complex offshore environments and to develop physic-informed surrogate models.

Fourth, using the developed surrogate models and optimisation, Off-coustics will propose new designs of silent farms that minimise the acoustic impact while ensuring energy production.Major advances in multidisciplinary aspects are expected, including fluid mechanics, numerical simulations, optimisation, experimental acoustics, aero/hydro-acoustics and offshore wind and tidal turbine physics.