| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, a framework for design and characterization of wave energy converters is presented. The theories needed for formulating the ocean wave forces and power take off and control forces are given and the equations of motion are created accordingly. The modeling steps including hydrodynamic analysis based on the potential theory in ANSYS AQWA, transferring frequency-domain equations to time-domain, and building the loads and control blocks in Simulink are briefly discussed. Then a simplified approach for power characterization of point absorber wave energy converters is taken and based on that a comparison study is performed on a typical heaving point absorber with three different power take off concepts. The results show that the latching control strategy gives the higher mean power as expected but it suffers from great control and power take off loads. Passive control strategy is shown to yield low power output but to be advantageous due to its simplicity and very low power take off forces. A new strategy for power take off is proposed and proved to have low power output. Moreover, a practical design procedure on optimal initial sizing of point absorber is presented which can be utilized in the early steps of the design process.
Keywords: Wave energy converter, point absorber, power characterization, power take-off, size design, control strategy, hydrodynamic analysis, Simulink modeling. | |