Water Flume Testing for Experimental Verification of Inerter Mechanism for Vibration Mitigation and Energy Conversion of Offshore Floating Buoys

Abstract

To become carbon neutral, offshore energy is getting more attention as a renewable energy source. Although most of the existing offshore structures are built on fixed foundations, they are currently restricted by the water depth. As shallow waters along the coast in Japan are limited, floating offshore structures applicable to water depths of 100 meters or more are considered desirable such as floating wind turbines or floating LiDAR buoys. Various studies on floating structures have been conducted worldwide, however, the wave-induced vibration and power supply shortage still remain as important issues to be addressed. In this study, we propose a new concept of a floating structure with the inerter-integrated wave energy converter (WEC) to generate electricity from the wave-induced vibration of the floating body and reduce the oscillation of the upper structure simultaneously. To verify the validity of the proposed WEC experimentally, a small-scale prototype of the proposed device is designed and wave flume testing is carried out with various regular wave inputs of different frequencies.