A Study on the Viscous Damping Effect According to the Shape of the Inclined OWC Chamber Skirt

Abstract

In this study, numerical analysis and experiments were performed to analyze the viscous damping effect according to the shape of the chamber skirt of the breakwater-linked inclined oscillating water column wave energy converter. Experiments were conducted using a two-dimensional mini wave tank and verified by comparing the results of a computational fluid dynamics numerical analysis. Pointed and rounded skirts were modeled to compare the effect of viscous damping when incident waves enter the chamber, and the difference in the displacement of the water surface in the chamber was compared according to the wave period for the two skirt shapes. The wave elevation in the chamber in the rounded-skirt condition was larger than the pointed-skirt condition in all wave periods, which was approximately 47% greater at 0.9 s of the incident wave period. Therefore, extracting the maximum energy through the optimal orifice is possible while minimizing the energy attenuation in the rounded-skirt condition.

Keywords

• inclined oscillating water column
• two-dimensional mini wave tank
• open chamber
• orifice
• skirt shape
• viscous damping effect