Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (Oct 2019)

Ocean Energy Systems Wave Energy Modelling Task: Modelling, Verification and Validation of Wave Energy Converters

  • Fabian Wendt,
  • Kim Nielsen,
  • Yi-Hsiang Yu,
  • Harry Bingham,
  • Claes Eskilsson,
  • Morten Kramer,
  • Aurélien Babarit,
  • Tim Bunnik,
  • Ronan Costello,
  • Sarah Crowley,
  • Benjamin Gendron,
  • Giuseppe Giorgi,
  • Simone Giorgi,
  • Samuel Girardin,
  • Deborah Greaves,
  • Pilar Heras,
  • Johan Hoffman,
  • Hafizul Islam,
  • Ken-Robert Jakobsen,
  • Carl-Erik Janson,
  • Johan Jansson,
  • Hyun Yul Kim,
  • Jeong-Seok Kim,
  • Kyong-Hwan Kim,
  • Adi Kurniawan,
  • Massimiliano Leoni,
  • Thomas Mathai,
  • Bo-Woo Nam,
  • Sewan Park,
  • Krishnakumar Rajagopalan,
  • Edward Ransley,
  • Robert Read,
  • John V. Ringwood,
  • José Miguel Rodrigues,
  • Benjamin Rosenthal,
  • André Roy,
  • Kelley Ruehl,
  • Paul Schofield,
  • Wanan Sheng,
  • Abolfazl Shiri,
  • Sarah Thomas,
  • Imanol Touzon,
  • Imai Yasutaka

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse7110379
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 11
p. 379

Abstract

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The International Energy Agency Technology Collaboration Programme for Ocean Energy Systems (OES) initiated the OES Wave Energy Conversion Modelling Task, which focused on the verification and validation of numerical models for simulating wave energy converters (WECs). The long-term goal is to assess the accuracy of and establish confidence in the use of numerical models used in design as well as power performance assessment of WECs. To establish this confidence, the authors used different existing computational modelling tools to simulate given tasks to identify uncertainties related to simulation methodologies: (i) linear potential flow methods; (ii) weakly nonlinear Froude−Krylov methods; and (iii) fully nonlinear methods (fully nonlinear potential flow and Navier−Stokes models). This article summarizes the code-to-code task and code-to-experiment task that have been performed so far in this project, with a focus on investigating the impact of different levels of nonlinearities in the numerical models. Two different WECs were studied and simulated. The first was a heaving semi-submerged sphere, where free-decay tests and both regular and irregular wave cases were investigated in a code-to-code comparison. The second case was a heaving float corresponding to a physical model tested in a wave tank. We considered radiation, diffraction, and regular wave cases and compared quantities, such as the WEC motion, power output and hydrodynamic loading.

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