Numerical study of an inclined OWC chamber combined breakwater and turbine interaction under waves

Abstract

In this study, the effect of wave field changes due to breakwaters on the performance of oscillating-water-column (OWC) type wave energy converter (WEC). A time-domain numerical method based on a three-dimensional potential flow solver is applied to compute the wave field around an inclined OWC chamber combined with the breakwater. Boundary value problem of Laplace equation is directly solved by using a finite element method. The present numerical method is verified based onthe comparison with previous research. From the numerical simulation results, the performance of the OWC device was affected by the change of the wave field around the chamber due to the scattered wave from the breakwater. The damping zonewas introduced to describe the energy dissipation effect at the front of the breakwater, and the breakwater effects on the chamber are discussed based on the numerical simulation results.