Dr. Dezhi Ning
Professor, School of Hydraulic Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, China.

Speech title: Numerical and Experimental Models for Oscillating Water Column Wave Energy Converter

Abstract: As one of the most successful wave energy converters, oscillating water column (OWC) device has been widely applied in many contries due to its simple geometry and mechanical mechanism. But there still are many potential problems deserved to be investigated to improve the hydrodynamic performance and survivalbility. In the present study, both numerical and experimental simulations are performed to study the effects of wave nonlinearity, viscosity and PTO damping on the hydrodynamic performance and dynamic characteristics, respectively. The improved nonlinear potential time-domain numerical model was developed based on the higher-order boundary element method and immerged source generation technique. A linear pneumatic model was introduced to obtain the air pressure in the chamber. The experiments were conducted in a wave flume at Dalian University of Technology. Free surfaces inside and outside the chamber, air pressure in the chamber and dynamic pressure on the front wall of the chamber were measured. Good agreements between numerical results and experimental data were obtained. Suggestions to enchance the power conversion efficiency and survivalbility are given for an fixed OWC device.