ABSTRACT

The paper focuses on oscillating wave energy converters and studies the wave response of a spherical device adopted for a validation study. A validation study is performed for a sphere with heave free motion encountering waves of varying wave lengths and amplitudes. Initially heave decay simulations is performed by releasing the sphere into the water from two different heights. Next, wave simulations are performed for varying wave lengths and wave heights and compared with available experimental and numerical results. The effect of wave steepness has also been studied. The open source CFD toolkit, OpenFOAM, is used for the study and the results show good agreement with available data in the literature. The study concludes that the consideration of the sea conditions is essential while deciding the size of a wave energy converter for optimal energy extraction.