Performance assessment of pitch-type wave energy converter in irregular wave conditions on the basis of numerical investigation

In this paper, a pitch-type wave energy converter (WEC-rotor) is investigated in irregular wave conditions for the real sea testing at the west coast of Jeju Island, South Korea. The present research builds on and extends our previous work on regular waves to irregular waves. The hydrodynamic characteristics of the WEC-rotor are assessed by establishing a quasi-two-dimensional numerical wave tank using computational fluid dynamics by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equation. The numerical solution is validated with physical experiments, and the comparison shows good agreement. Furthermore, the hydrodynamic performance of the WEC-rotor is explored by investigating the effect of the power take-off (PTO) loading torque by one-way and two-way systems, the wave height, the wave period, operational and high sea wave conditions. Irrespective of the sea wave conditions, the absorbed power is quadratic in nature with the one-way and two-way PTO loading systems. The power absorption increases with the wave height, and the increment is rapid and mild in the two-way and one-way PTO loading torques, respectively. The pitch response amplitude operator increases as the wave period increases until the maximum value and then decreases. For a fixed PTO loading, the power and efficiency are higher in the two-way PTO loading system than in the one-way PTO loading system at different wave periods.