Hydrodynamic performance optimization of a point absorber

Abstract:

To improve the hydrodynamic performance of point absorber, the CFD method based on viscous fluid mechanics was used to simulate the buoy motion of point absorber in three-dimensional. The influences of different buoy shape, different damping coefficients, mass and motions performance were researched, and the CFD results agreed with the experimental results better than that of the potential theory. The circular column buoy was better than the circular truncated cone buoy in natural and damping oscillation, and with the enlarging of damping coefficient, the capture width ratio increased in the best damping and then decreased. The damping coefficient corresponding to the maximum capture width ratio was the best. With the enlarging of mass, the capture width ratio increased slowly and had a slight decrease.