TY - JOUR
T1 - Numerical simulation of a stationary offshore multi-chamber OWC wave energy converter
AU - Mia, Mohammad Rashed
AU - Zhao, Ming
AU - Wu, Helen
AU - Palmer, Heath
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - This paper aims to study the improvement in hydrodynamic efficiency of an OWC device by dividing a single chamber into multiple chambers. The two-dimensional incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved to simulate the water motion due to waves and a compressible aerodynamic model is used to calculate the airflow through the turbine. Simulation of a dual-chamber-two-turbine (2C2T) case was first conducted using a range of turbine coefficients to identify the best turbine coefficient to be used for the rest of the study. The dual-chamber-dual-turbine configuration was found to increase the efficiency more than the case of two chambers sharing a single turbine (2C1T). The triple-chamber-triple-turbine (3C3T) configuration further increases the efficiency when compared with the 2C2T configuration. Despite achieving greater changes in free surface elevation, when compared with multi-turbine multi-chamber configurations, shared turbine configurations achieve lower overall efficiency due to phase differences in surface elevation between chambers.
AB - This paper aims to study the improvement in hydrodynamic efficiency of an OWC device by dividing a single chamber into multiple chambers. The two-dimensional incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved to simulate the water motion due to waves and a compressible aerodynamic model is used to calculate the airflow through the turbine. Simulation of a dual-chamber-two-turbine (2C2T) case was first conducted using a range of turbine coefficients to identify the best turbine coefficient to be used for the rest of the study. The dual-chamber-dual-turbine configuration was found to increase the efficiency more than the case of two chambers sharing a single turbine (2C1T). The triple-chamber-triple-turbine (3C3T) configuration further increases the efficiency when compared with the 2C2T configuration. Despite achieving greater changes in free surface elevation, when compared with multi-turbine multi-chamber configurations, shared turbine configurations achieve lower overall efficiency due to phase differences in surface elevation between chambers.
UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:68988
U2 - 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112546
DO - 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112546
M3 - Article
VL - 265
JO - Ocean Engineering
JF - Ocean Engineering
M1 - 112546
ER -
