Hydrodynamic performance of an oscillating water column wave energy converter by means of particle imaging velocimetry

I. López, A. Castro and G. Iglesias

Energy, 2015, vol. 83, issue C, 89-103

Abstract: In an OWC (oscillating water column) wave energy converter the damping exerted by the turbine on the movements of the water column is one of the main factors, if not the main, affecting the power output. In this work the effects of the turbine-induced damping and the variation in the tidal level on the efficiency of the converter are investigated by means of a novel approach. PIV (particle imaging velocimetry) is used to determine the characteristics of the flow (the velocity and vorticity fields, and the kinetic energy) through a phase-averaging procedure. Then, Reynolds decomposition is applied to separate the velocity fluctuations for each test in order to estimate the turbulent kinetic energy. On this basis, we establish the relevance of the different factors—damping, tidal level and wave conditions—to the hydrodynamic performance of the OWC. We find that the turbine-induced damping is the factor that plays the main role: it affects the hydrodynamic behaviour of the chamber and thereby determines the amount of energy that the OWC is able to capture. In addition, the lip is found to be the critical element of the OWC chamber from the point of view of the structural design.

Keywords: Wave energy; Oscillating water column; Particle imaging velocimetry; Turbulent kinetic energy; Turbine damping; Tidal level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215002571
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:83:y:2015:i:c:p:89-103

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2015.01.119

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().