HYDRODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF SHORELINE OWC TYPE WAVE ENERGY CONVERTERS

A numerical model to predict the hydrodynamic performance of a shoreline-mounted wave energy converter, normally referred to as Oscillating Water Column (OWC), was established. Based on the 3D boundary integral equation method, the 3D Green's function was utilized to describe the hydrodynamic flow around the device. Using geometrical data of a wave absorber device symmetrically placed in a channel with various barrier depths, the hydrodynamic efficiencies were calculated for regular waves. The results were the ncompared with analytical results published elsewhere Malmo[8] . And the comparison is shown to be good, thus validating the proposed numerical model. Furthermore, extensive experiments were also made in a wave tank with a 1:12 scale model of an OWC device of different geometrical configurations. The experimental measurements were compared with calculations using the newly developed numerical model. The comparison, which is also shown to be satisfactory, provides further support of the correctness and the accuracy of the numerical method presented in the paper.