A fast approach coupling Boundary Element Method and plane wave approximation for wave interaction analysis in sparse arrays of wave energy converters

Jitendra Singh (1) , A. Babarit (1)

1 LHEEA - Laboratoire de recherche en Hydrodynamique, Énergétique et Environnement Atmosphérique

A computational approach is developed to investigate wave interaction effects in sparse arrays of floating bodies (such as wave energy converters) based on the linear potential theory.In particular, the wave diffraction and radiation problems in multiple body array are solved efficiently and in reasonable time. In contrast to the previous approaches that considered all bodies as a single module, the present approach treats each body in array as an isolatedbody. The interactions due to scattered wave field among the bodies are then taken into account via plane wave approximation in an iterative manner. The boundary value problem corresponding to anisolated body is solved by the Boundary Element Method (BEM). The approach is useful for wave periods in the range 4-15 seconds provided the bodies are separated by at-least five times the characteristic dimensions of a body. The main advantage of the approach is that the computational time and memory requirements are significantly less than the conventional BEM. First, the numerical results for hydrodynamic coefficients computed by the proposed approach are validated against the conventional BEM. Next, the wave interaction effects on power production are investigated in arrays of 50 wave energy converters.

Mots clés: Power production; Boundary Element Method; Wave energy converter; Wave interactions; Plane wave approximation

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Jitendra Singh, A. Babarit. A fast approach coupling Boundary Element Method and plane wave approximation for wave interaction analysis in sparse arrays of wave energy converters. Ocean Engineering, 2014, 85, pp.12-20. ⟨10.1016/j.oceaneng.2014.04.019⟩. ⟨hal-01145191⟩