Numerical simulation and validation of CECO wave energy converter

CECO is a new wave energy converter (WEC), designed to convert simultaneously the kinetic and the potential energy of waves in electricity, based on the oblique motion of two lateral floating modules. Its proof of concept was successfully carried out at the Hydraulics Laboratory of the Hydraulics, Water Resources and Environment Division of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, using a physical model built on a geometric scale of 1/20. The results obtained are used in this paper to validate a hydrodynamic numerical model of CECO created with Ansys (R) Agwa (TM), which is a code based on the boundary element method. The experimental proof of concept and its main conclusions are briefly described, and the subsequent numerical validation work is presented. Initially the results of the physical model tests are used to calibrate the numerical model, to correctly simulate the mechanical losses and damping in the system. Once calibrated, the model is used to analyze the behavior of CECO under new wave conditions, to better understand its behavior and performance. The numerical results showed a good agreement with the physical model ones and allowed to obtain a better insight into the performance of CECO. The efficiency in capturing the wave energy was estimated to exceed 50% for some wave conditions. Although the results obtained are very promising, additional research is required to fully optimize CECO performance.