Abstract
A two-dimensional numerical Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is established on the basis of viscous CFD theory to investigate the motion response and power absorption performance of a bottom-hinged flap-type wave energy converter (WEC) under regular wave conditions. The convergence study of mesh size and time step is performed to ensure that wave height and motion response are sufficiently accurate. Wave height results reveal that the attenuation of wave height along the wave tank is less than 5% only if the suitable mesh size and time step are selected. The model proposed in this work is verified against published experimental and numerical models. The effects of mechanical damping, wave height, wave frequency, and water depth on the motion response, power generation, and energy conversion efficiency of the flap-type WEC are investigated. The selection of the appropriate mechanical damping of the WEC is crucial for the optimal extraction of wave power. The optimal mechanical damping can be readily predicted by using potential flow theory. It can then be verified by applying CFD numerical results. In addition, the motion response and the energy conversion efficiency of the WEC decrease as the incident wave height increases because the strengthened nonlinear effect of waves intensifies energy loss. Moreover, the energy conversion efficiency of the WEC decreases with increasing water depth and remains constant as the water depth reaches a critical value. Therefore, the selection of the optimal parameters during the design process is necessary to ensure that the WEC exhibits the maximum energy conversion efficiency.
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Funding
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51409066, 51761135013), the High Technology Ship Scientific Research Project from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China–Floating Security Platform Project (the second stage, 201622), and the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central University (HEUCFJ180104, HEUCFP1809).
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Article Highlights
• The energy conversion efficiency of the flap-type WEC decreases as incident wave height increases because of energy loss.
• The energy conversion efficiency of the flap-type WEC decreases as water depth increases.
• The maximum energy conversion efficiency is achieved when the optimal PTO damping calculated with the linear frequency domain theory is selected.
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Yuan, Z., Zhang, L., Zhou, B. et al. Analysis of the Hydrodynamic Performance of an Oyster Wave Energy Converter Using Star-CCM+. J. Marine. Sci. Appl. 18, 153–159 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11804-019-00076-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11804-019-00076-8
Keywords
- Wave energy converter
- Oyster
- Energy conversion efficiency
- Optimum PTO damping
- Nonlinear regular wave