Comparison of 2d and 3d Simulations of an Owc Device in Different Configurations

Abstract

The oscillating water column (OWC)device is a wave energy converter which converts the work done by the air column in a partially submerged pneumatic chamber into a electrical energy. This paper carries out numerical simulations using a computation fluid dynamics model to study the motion of the free surface inside the chamber in two different configurations of the device and also in two-and three-dimensions. It is observed that the 2D and 3D simulations provide the same results for the motion of the free surface and thus computationally cheaper 2D simulations can be employed to study the hydrodynamics of the OWC device. It is also observed that an asymmetrical device produces higher oscillation of the free surface in the chamber as it does not allow transmission of the wave across the device as in a symmetrical configuration.

Hydrodynamic response and power efficiency analysis of heaving wave energy converter integrated with breakwater

“…The thickness is represented as a single layer of mesh in the simulation domain. The typical mesh of the two-dimensional wave tank domain is presented in [36][37][38]. The air and water phases are separated; the water depth is 3.5 m. The right and left sides are defined as the velocity inlet and pressure outlet, respectively.…”

WCSPH simulation of the forced response of an attenuator oscillating water column wave energy converter

“…The first step in the numerical study of a particular wave energy device is to select the most appropriate numerical scheme for a particular modeling purpose (Folley, 2016). So far, the hydrodynamic wave-OWC interaction problem has been investigated using analytical or different numerical models such as the finite difference method (FDM) (Ketabdari, et al, 2014;Kamath, et al, 2014;Kuo, et al, 2017), boundary element method (BEM) (Lee, et al, 1996;Delaure & Lewis, 2003;Hong, et al, 2004;Josset & Clement, 2007;Bingham, et al, 2015;Bailey, et al, 2016;Wang & Ning, 2020;Joensen, et al, 2021), finite element method (FEM) (Nader, et al, 2012;Teixeira, et al, 2013;Howe & Nader, 2017), finite volume method (FVM) (Conde, et al, 2011;Dai, et al, 2019), the volume of fluid method (VOF) (Bouali & Larbi, 2013;Lopez, et al, 2014;Elhanafi & Kim, 2018;Xu & Huang, 2019). In recent years, particle methods have been also used to study the wave interaction with OWC devices.…”