Abstract
This paper presents a new method for improving the assessment of energy and resources of waves in the cases of finite water depths in which the historical and some ongoing sea wave measurements are simply given in forms of scatter diagrams or the forms of (significant) wave heights and the relevant statistical wave periods, whilst the detailed spectrum information has been discarded, thus no longer available for the purpose of analysis. As a result of such simplified wave data, the assessment for embracing the effects of water depths on wave energy and resources becomes either difficult or inaccurate. In many practical cases, the effects of water depths are simply ignored because the formulas for deep-water waves are frequently employed. This simplification may cause large energy under-estimations for the sea waves in finite water depths. To improve the wave energy assessment for such much-simplified wave data, an approximate method is proposed for approximating the effect of water depth in this research, for which the wave energy period or the calculated peak period can be taken as the reference period for implementing the approximation. The examples for both theoretical and measured spectra show that the proposed method can significantly reduce the errors on wave energy assessment due to the approximations and inclusions of the effects of finite water depths.
Highlights
Wave energy resource assessments have been an important factor for wave energy developments in recent years, and the focus has been on the assessment and characterisation of wave energy resources [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], with the global wave energy resource assessments on the overall resources and the distributions of wave energy [3,4,5,6], and the regional and national wave energy resources on the potentials for developing wave energy [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
It can be seen that the proposed method is capable of improving the wave energy assessment in the cases of finite water depths: for both popular theoretical spectra (Bretschneider spectrum and JONSWAP spectrum) and the measured spectra from the Irish Coast, the proposed method could reduce the errors of wave energy assessment to less than 5% for the individual sea state, and to less than 4% for wave resources
The effect of water depths on wave energy assessment has been studied, and a method has been proposed for improving the wave energy assessment in finite water depth for the cases of only the simple scatter diagram available
Summary
Wave energy resource assessments have been an important factor for wave energy developments in recent years, and the focus has been on the assessment and characterisation of wave energy resources [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], with the global wave energy resource assessments on the overall resources and the distributions of wave energy [3,4,5,6], and the regional and national wave energy resources on the potentials for developing wave energy [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. In height many and practical statistical periods, while the important spectrum information (spectral shape and distribution) for of cases, the historical and ongoing sea wave measurements are frequently given in simple forms assessing the effect of water depths on wave energy has been discarded and no longer available for scatter diagrams or some statistical parameters, such as the significant wave height and statistical analysis. It can be seen that the proposed method is capable of improving the wave energy assessment in the cases of finite water depths: for both popular theoretical spectra (Bretschneider spectrum and JONSWAP spectrum) and the measured spectra from the Irish Coast, the proposed method could reduce the errors of wave energy assessment to less than 5% for the individual sea state (from the error of more than 14% when using the deep-water formulas), and to less than 4% for wave resources (compared to the error of more than 10% using the deep-water formulas)
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