Effects of Hull Shape on Primary Conversion Characteristics of a Floating OWC ”Backward Bent Duct Buoy”

Abstract

Backward Bent Duct Buoy (BBDB) is a type of oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter invented by Masuda. BBDB is said to have superior primary conversion efficiency with maintaining small mooring costs. However, some problems remain unclear with the relationship between body shape and its motions in addition to the primary conversion efficiency and its motions. A number of physical tests for five different BBDB models were carried out in this research. From these experimental results, the effects of BBDB hull shape and the primary conversion efficiency were obtained. Furthermore, methods for obtaining incident wave components and for obtaining the responses of BBDB induced by the incident waves using the experimental results of BBDB are proposed.

Keywords

• wave energy converter
• regular wave