With the recent sharp increases in the price of oil, issues of security of supply, and pressure to honor greenhouse gas emission limits (e.g., the Kyoto protocol), much attention has turned to renewable energy sources to fulfill future increasing energy needs. Wind energy, now a mature technology, has had considerable proliferation, with other sources, such as biomass, solar, and tidal, enjoying somewhat less deployment. Waves provide previously untapped energy potential, and wave energy has been shown to have some favorable variability properties (a perennial issue with many renewables, especially wind), especially when combined with wind energy [1].

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Energy-Maximizing Control of Wave-Energy Converters: The Development of Control System Technology to Optimize Their Operation

During the past few decades, wave energy has received significant attention for harnessing ocean energy. Industry has proposed many technologies and, based on their working principle, these technologies generally can be categorized into oscillating water columns, point absorbers, overtopping systems, and bottom-hinged systems. In particular, many researchers have focused on modeling the point absorber, which is thought to be the most cost-efficient technology to extract wave energy. To model such devices, several modeling methods have been used such as analytical methods, boundary integral equation methods and Navier–Stokes equation methods. The first two are generally combined with the use of empirical solution to represent the viscous damping effect, while the last one is directly included in the solution. To assist the development of wave energy conversion (WEC) technologies, this paper extensively reviews the methods for modeling point absorbers.

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A synthesis of numerical methods for modeling wave energy converter-point absorbers

The wave energy sector has made and is still doing a great effort in order to open up a niche in the energy market, working on several and diverse concepts and making advances in all aspects towards more efficient technologies However, economic viability has not been achieved yet, for which maximisation of power production over the full range of sea conditions is crucial Precise mathematical models are essential to accurately reproduce the behaviour, including nonlinear dynamics, and understand the performance of wave energy converters Therefore, nonlinear models must be considered, which are required for power absorption assessment, simulation of devices motion and model-based control systems Main sources of nonlinear dynamics within the entire chain of a wave energy converter - incoming wave trains, wave-structure interaction, power take-off systems or mooring lines- are identified, with especial attention to the wave-device hydrodynamic interaction, and their influence is studied in the present paper for different types of converters In addition, different approaches to model nonlinear wave-device interaction are presented, highlighting their advantages and drawbacks Besides the traditional Navier-Stokes equations or potential flow methods, ‘new’ methods such as system-identification models, smoothed particle hydrodynamics or nonlinear potential flow methods are analysed

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Mathematical modelling of wave energy converters: A review of nonlinear approaches

Numerical methods in laminar and turbulent flow

For the research and development (R&D) of wave energy converters (WECs), numerical wave tanks (NWTs) provide an excellent numerical tool, enabling a cost-effective testbed for WEC experimentation, analysis and optimisation. Different methods for simulating the fluid dynamics and fluid structure interaction (FSI) within the NWT have been developed over the years, with increasing levels of fidelity, and associated computational expense. In the past, the high computational requirements largely precluded Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) from being applied to WEC analysis. However, the continual improvement and availability of high performance computing has led to the steady increase of CFD-based NWTs (CNWT) for WEC experiments. No attempt has yet been undertaken to comprehensively review CNWT approaches for WECs. This paper fills this gap and presents a thorough review of high-fidelity numerical modelling of WECs using CNWTs. In addition to collating the published literature, this review tries to make a step towards a best practice guideline for the applications of CFD in the field of wave energy.

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High-fidelity numerical modelling of ocean wave energy systems: A review of computational fluid dynamics-based numerical wave tanks

RANSE with Free Surface Computations around fixed and Free DTMB 5415 model in Still Water and in Waves

Viscous flow simulation past a ship in waves using the SWENSE approach

In this paper, the wave transmission, reflection, and energy dissipation characteristics as well as the hydrodynamic forces of two partially submerged breakwaters are compared. The breakwaters under consideration are designed to be installed in coastal areas where the water depth may be important (typically 50 m), making traditional bottom seated configurations unsuitable. They are composed of a free-surface piercing caisson mounted on vertical piles. The first breakwater considered in this study, as a matter of reference for comparison, is a rectangular caisson. The second one is a new profile proposed by Colmard and called BYBOP by the writer. The seaside face, fronting the ocean, is an elliptic profile while the harbor side is a plane inclined 55° to the vertical. A numerical simulation on both these shapes, at model scale, was carried out in two numerical wave tanks. The first one, CANAL, is based on fully nonlinear potential flow theory while the second one, ICARE, is a Reynolds averaged Navier–Stoke...

Hydrodynamic Efficiency of a New Design of Half-Submerged Breakwater Compared to a Rectangular Caisson

This paper presents the recent developments of the Spectral Wave Explicit Navier-Stokes Equations (SWENSE) method to extend its range of application to two-phase VOF solvers. The SWENSE method solves the wave-structure interaction problem by coupling potential theory and the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations. It evaluates the incident wave solution by wave models based on potential theory in the entire computational domain, leaving only the perturbation caused by the structure and the influence of the viscosity to be solved with CFD. The method was proven in previous studies to be accurate and efficient for wave-structure interaction problems, but it was derived for single-phase NS solvers only. The present study extends the SWENSE method by proposing a novel formulation which is convenient to implement in two-phase NS solvers. A customized SWENSE solver is developed with the open source CFD package Open-FOAM. An improvement in accuracy and stability is observed in wave simulations compared with conventional two-phase VOF solvers. The horizontal force on a vertical cylinder in regular waves is also calculated. First results show a good agreement with the experiment on the first harmonic component.

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Lionel Gentaz

Papers

RANSE with Free Surface Computations around fixed and Free DTMB 5415 model in Still Water and in Waves

Viscous flow simulation past a ship in waves using the SWENSE approach

Hydrodynamic Efficiency of a New Design of Half-Submerged Breakwater Compared to a Rectangular Caisson

Progress in Coupling Potential Wave Models and Two-Phase Solvers With the SWENSE Methodology

Performance of different techniques of generation and absorption of free-surface waves in Computational Fluid Dynamics