Parameters variation effects on energy recovery for a freely floating wave energy converter

Abstract

This study presents the effects of parameters variations on the recovered energy for a floating wave energy converter (WEC) device. The articulated multi body floating WEC under consideration consists of two cylinders connected by a flat plate. The connections between the parts of the WEC allow the rotational movements of cylinders and the plate. The aim of this paper is to investigate the coupled effect of the length of the plate with the amplitude and period of the wave on the recovered energy by the floating WEC. The results show that the value of the optimum length for the plate is related to the sea wave condition, and more particularly to the amplitude and wavelength of the oscillations of the free surface.

Keywords

• Wave energy converter
• wave characteristics
• multi-body articulated system
• parameters dimensioning.