Design and Numerical Simulations of a Flow Induced Vibration Energy Converter for Underwater Mooring Platforms

Abstract

Limited battery energy restricts the duration of the underwater operation of underwater mooring platforms (UMPs). In this paper, a flow-induced vibration energy converter (FIVEC) is designed to produce power for the UMPs and extend their operational time. The FIVEC is equipped with a thin plate to capture the kinetic energy in the vortices shed from the surface of the UMP. A magnetic coupling (MC) is applied for the non-contacting transmission of the plate torque to the generators so that the friction loss can be minimized. In order to quantify and evaluate the performance of the FIVEC, two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed. Simulations are based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and the shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulent model is utilized. The CFD method is firstly validated using existing experimental data. Then the influences of plate length and system damping on the performance of the FIVEC are evaluated. The results show that the device has a maximum averaged power coefficient of 0.0520 (13.86 W) in the considered situations. The results also demonstrate the feasibility of this energy converter plan.

An Intelligent Optimization Method for Vortex-Induced Vibration Reducing and Performance Improving in a Large Francis Turbine

“…For example, Viviano and Musumeci et al [7][8][9] proposed simplified numerical models, which simulate turbulence by means of eddy viscosity formulation, to study the mechanism of waves. But when it comes to optimal design, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) turns out to be a better choice because it is more practical and it can overcome the limitations of experimental conditions [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. For instance, Zhang et al [10] performed an investigation of two degrees of freedom on vortex-induced vibration under the wakes interference of an oscillating airfoil.…”

Numerical Study on the Influence of Mass and Stiffness Ratios on the Vortex Induced Motion of an Elastically Mounted Cylinder for Harnessing Power

“…Also, these experiments revealed relatively larger response amplitude compared to other studies. Recently researchers have also succeeded in theoretically proving the effectiveness of harnessing VIV energy for powering underwater mooring platforms [12].…”

Structure Optimization of a Vibration Suppression Device for Underwater Moored Platforms Using CFD and Neural Network

“…It is noted that all the iterative processes of the BP neural network have a mean square error (mse), as shown in (22). In addition, the average accuracy of the prediction ( ) is defined by Kreith et al (2000) [27] and Wang (2000) [28].…”

“…As shown in Figure 3, it can be seen from the figure that the center of UMP is placed at a distance from the left boundary of the computational domain to 15 and on the symmetry axis of the of the top and bottom boundary. The overall domain is split into seven subdomains, including two external static domains, two dynamic domains for updating the grid with layering method [22,23], two inner stationary domains 5 and 6, and an oscillating domain. This inner stationary domain 7 contains the cells around the UMP.…”