Modelling and simulation of a wave energy converter

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical model and numerical simulations for an oscillating water column wave energy converter, focusing on wave-structure interaction and transmission problems using Riemann invariants and Lax-Friedrichs scheme.

Contribution

It introduces a novel reformulation of the wave energy converter as transmission problems and applies Riemann invariants for discretization and simulation.

Findings

Successful modeling of wave interaction with the device

Effective numerical scheme implementation

Insights into wave energy conversion dynamics

Abstract

In this work we present the mathematical model and simulations of a particular wave energy converter, the so-called oscillating water column. In this device, waves governed by the one-dimensional nonlinear shallow water equations arrive from offshore, encounter a step in the bottom and then arrive into a chamber to change the volume of the air to activate the turbine. The system is reformulated as two transmission problems: one is related to the wave motion over the stepped topography and the other one is related to the wave-structure interaction at the entrance of the chamber. We finally use the characteristic equations of Riemann invariants to obtain the discretized transmission conditions and we implement the Lax-Friedrichs scheme to get numerical solutions.