Latching and Declutching Control of the Solo Duck Wave-Energy Converter with Different Load Types

Jinming Wu, Yingxue Yao, Liang Zhou and Malin Göteman
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Jinming Wu: School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang, China
Yingxue Yao: Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, China
Liang Zhou: School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang, China
Malin Göteman: Department of Engineering Science, Uppsala University, 75121 Uppsala, Sweden

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: The solo duck wave-energy converter (WEC) captures power in a point absorber manner, hence it exhibits high power-capture efficiency within only a narrow bandwidth. Passive control is characterized by a unidirectional power flow, and thus its engineering implementation can be simplified. In this paper, two typical passive control strategies, latching and declutching control, are applied to the solo duck WEC to improve its power-capture performance at wave periods larger and smaller than the natural period of the WEC, respectively. Special attention is paid to the peak value of instantaneous WEC performance parameters, including the peak motion excursion, the peak power take-off (PTO) moment, and the peak-to-average power ratio, when the captured power is maximized. Performance differences between the linear and coulomb loads are also investigated. Results show that both latching and declutching control can effectively improve captured power, but also incidentally increase the peak motion excursion and peak-to-average power ratio. When under latching and declutching control, the coulomb load leads to the same maximum relative capture width and peak motion excursion as the linear load, but presents smaller peak PTO moment and peak-to-average power ratio than the linear load, hence making the coulomb load the better choice for the solo duck WEC.

Keywords: passive control; latching control; declutching control; solo duck; load types (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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