COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS ANALYSIS OF A WAVE ENERGY CONVERTER

Renewable energy extraction is a fast-growing sector, and many promising projects in Wave energy extraction (WEE) have been developed. For marine areas with a high energy potential, wave energy floating structures, also called Wave energy converters (WEC), take advantage of both the water and wave-induced motions. Starting from the fact that the shape of the converter is the most significant factor in obtaining resonance conditions, the study of different WEC designs will also provide information on the seakeeping characteristics and the hydrodynamic response in various waves regime. The numerical results obtained using the Computational fluid dynamics method denote that the Response amplitude operator (RAO) of WEC converters can be optimised following specific environmental conditions and specific frequency spectrum of waves. In this regard, an analysis of wave regimes was necessary to draw up in the western part of the Black Sea. From a long-term analysis, 1971-2017 period, for the Romanian Black Sea shelf, the calm sea state (<= 0.2 m) occurs half of the time, and wind waves propagate with the same rate from NE-ENE (33.5%) and E-ESE (similar to 34%). Furthermore, this analysis was the basis of shape design investigation, in Ansys software, according to the RAO criterion for the heave motion control of WEC.