Suggestion for programe to simulate underwater turbines in rivers?
 

Hi all,
I'm currently doing a project on simulating underwater turbines in a river flow i'm currently attempting to write the simulation in Gerris, but this is proving very difficult, as i could not find much help/support for that.

My current plan is just to model a flow of a bathymetry, which i already have in long lat and depth in a text file. My aim is to test out the placement of the turbines to find out the optimal placement for a 10-20% velocity drop in current (relative to the original current without turbines) in a specific location. The turbines will be rectangles(in 2D) and cylinders(in 3D) with an assigned drag coefficient to simulate the turbines.

Can anyone suggest a more user friendly or well supported (preferably free) software for this project? i only know the very basics of C and i'm currently doing more reading into it.

I have looked at OpenFOAM seems to be very promising.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated especially any websites/forum links that is related to the problem.
Thank you very much in advance.
Tim

Edit: apologies i forgot to mention that i have a list of the tide height at different times at one location with the harmonic constituents worked out in terms of cosine functions, which then led me to the list of estimated currents at different times, i think i can get hold of the tide height at various points along the area of interest, any combination of these can be the input to define the flow, i currently have the flow worked out with the harmonic constituents with my Gerris model, but i can't seem to add the turbines in the flow.