Mooring System Design for a Wave Energy Converter
The mooring system design for a wave energy converter (WEC) is a big challenge. Normally, the mooring systems have been designed to restrict the movement and to avoid resonance frequencies that could be dangerous for floating structures, such as oil and gas platforms, floating production, storage and offshore loading vessels, etc. However, some WEC designs aim for the opposite, looking to maximize the movement in one or more degrees of freedom, in order to extract power in more efficient ways. As offshore wave energy technologies are relative new, there is little public literature about this kind of design.
Here in WCWI we are investigating how the mooring systems influences the power production of wave energy point absorbers, using numerical simulation tools, such as Proteus DSA, Wamit, Shipmo 3D, Matlab , etc. We are studying the effects of the non-linear movement of the mooring systems and how they interact with the WEC. We are looking for ways to optimize the design and improve the efficiency of this device.
The above simulation demonstrates mooring lines stress for a wave energy convertor using regular waves.