Abstract
Between the Wave Energy Converters (WECs) of a farm, hydrodynamic interactions occur and have an impact on the surrounding wave field, both close to the WECs (“near field” effects) and at large distances from their location (“far field” effects). To simulate this “far field” impact in a fast and accurate way, a generic coupling methodology between hydrodynamic models has been developed by the Coastal Engineering Research Group of Ghent University in Belgium. This coupling methodology has been widely used for regular waves. However, it has not been developed yet for realistic irregular sea states. The objective of this paper is to present a validation of the novel coupling methodology for the test case of irregular waves, which is demonstrated here for coupling between the mild slope wave propagation model, MILDwave, and the ‘Boundary Element Method’-based wave–structure interaction solver, NEMOH. MILDwave is used to model WEC farm “far field” effects, while NEMOH is used to model “near field” effects. The results of the MILDwave-NEMOH coupled model are validated against numerical results from NEMOH, and against the WECwakes experimental data for a single WEC, and for WEC arrays of five and nine WECs. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between disturbance coefficient (Kd) values in the entire numerical domain ( R M S E K d , D ) are used for evaluating the performed validation. The R M S E K d , D between results from the MILDwave-NEMOH coupled model and NEMOH is lower than 2.0% for the performed test cases, and between the MILDwave-NEMOH coupled model and the WECwakes experimental data R M S E K d , D remains below 10%. Consequently, the efficiency is demonstrated of the coupling methodology validated here which is used to simulate WEC farm impact on the wave field under the action of irregular waves.
Highlights
Ocean waves are an enormous marine renewable energy source with the potential to contribute to a reduction in the world’s fossil fuel dependency
To complete the validation of the MILDwave-NEMOH coupled model against experimental data, the RMSEKd,wave gauges (WGs) is calculated between the Kd,coupled and the Kd,WECwavkes for all Test Cases of
The validation of a novel generic coupling methodology for modeling both near and far field effects of floating structures and Wave Energy Converters (WECs) is presented for the test case of irregular waves
Summary
Ocean waves are an enormous marine renewable energy source with the potential to contribute to a reduction in the world’s fossil fuel dependency. The exploitation of wave energy is a complex and expensive process that takes place in a rough environment. Many WECs have to be deployed and arranged in WEC farms to produce large amounts of electricity and to have economically viable wave energy projects. The overall wave power absorption of a WEC farm will affect the surrounding wave field creating areas of reduced wave energy (areas of decreased wave height) in the lee of the WEC farm as seen in [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The hydrodynamic problem of wave power absorption between the WECs within a farm, and between the WECs and the incident wave field is characterized by three different problems namely: Energies 2019, 12, 538; doi:10.3390/en12030538 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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