Numerical and Experimental Study of a Surging Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter. Conference paper at the 8th European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference, Uppsala, Sweden.

Abstract:

<p>Numerical modelling of a WEC is presented in this paper along with some details of the experimental setup. Issues related to the numerical modelling of the single DOF (degree-of-freedom) motion of a surging point absorber WEC (wave energy converter) are outlined and a comparison with experimental data is presented. A commercial CFD code Flow-3D has been used for the numerical modelling and the ability of the code to simulate free surface linear waves and wavestructure interaction is evaluated in this paper.</p> <p>The work is aimed at simulating a surging wave energy converter to achieve an optimized shape and to predict output power at a higher or full scale. The findings of this study may also serve as a reference point for the use of a commercial code such as Flow-3D for simulating such problems.</p> This report is divided into the following sections: <ol> <li>Introduction</li> <li>Wave Tank Experiments</li> <li>Numerical Modelling</li> <li>Results</li> <li>Conclusions and Future Work</li> </ol>

Author(s):

Bhinder, M.A., Mingham, C.G., Causon, D.M., Rahmati, M.T., Aggidis, G.A. and Chaplin, R.V.