Study on design of mooring lines for floating pendulum wave energy converter

Abstract

A floating pendulum wave energy converter (FPWEC) uses pendulum motion in an open-mouthed water chamber to capture wave energy. FPWEC is wave-activated body-type device that not only has a high rate of operation, but also have relatively lower costs for installation that their fixed counterparts. However, larger amplitudes during motion caused by repetitive and extreme wave loads can reduce the durability of an FPWEC. In this paper, we presented a design of mooring lines for the FPWECs. The design parameters considered for the mooring lines are pre-tension, position of fairlead point, azimuth angle of mooring lines, and location of the anchor point. The 6-Degrees of Freedom (DOF) motion and mooring line tension were investigated numerically and the optimal mooring line design was proposed considering its durability and survivability. Copyright ？ 2015 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE).