A tidal turbine simulation system is developed based on a three-dimensional oceanographic numericalmodel. Both the current and turbulent controlling equations are modified to account for impact of tidalturbines on water velocity and turbulence generation and dissipation. High resolution mesh size at theturbine location is assigned in order to capture the details of hydrodynamics due to the turbine oper-ation. The system is tested against comprehensive measurements in a waterflume experiment and re-sults of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The validation results suggest that the newmodelling system is proven to be able to accurately simulate hydrodynamics with the presence of tur-bines. The developed turbine simulation system is then applied to a series of test cases in which astandalone turbine is deployed. Here, complete velocity profiles and mixing are realized that could nothave been produced in a standard two-dimensional treatment. Of particular interest in these cases is anobserved acceleratedflow near the bed in the wake of the turbine, leading to enhanced bottom shearstress (~2 N/m2corresponding to the critical stress of a range offine gravel andfiner sediment particles).©2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license