Wave energy is an important type of marine renewable energy. A wave energy converter(WEC) moored with two floating bodies was developed in the present study. To analyze the dynamic performance of the WEC, an experimental device was designed and tested in a tank. The experiment focused on the factors which impact the motion and energy conversion performance of the WEC. Dynamic performance was evaluated by the relative displacements and velocities of the oscillator and carrier which served as the floating bodies of WEC. Four factors were tested, i.e. wave height, wave period, power take-off(PTO) damping, and mass ratio(RM) of the oscillator and carrier. Experimental results show that these factors greatly affect the energy conversion performance, especially when the wave period matches RM and PTO damping. According to the results, we conclude that:(a) the maximization of the relative displacements and velocities leads to the maximization of the energy conversion efficiency;(b) the larger the wave height, the higher the energy conversion efficiency will be;(c) the relationships of energy conversion efficiency with wave period, PTO damping, and RM are nonlinear, but the maximum efficiency is obtained when these three factors are optimally matched. Experimental results demonstrated that the energy conversion efficiency reached the peak at 28.62% when the wave height was 120 mm, wave period was 1.0 s, RM was 0.21, and the PTO damping was corresponding to the resistance of 100 Ω.
In this paper,a method is proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the vertical axis turbine.First of all,a single disk multiple stream-tube model is used to calculate individual fitness.Genetic algorithm is adopted to optimize blade pitch motion of vertical axis turbine with the maximum energy efficiency being selected as the optimization objective.Then,a particular data processing method is proposed,fitting the result data into a cosine-like curve.After that,a general formula calculating the blade motion is developed.Finally,CFD simulation is used to validate the blade pitch motion formula.The results show that the turbine's energy efficiency becomes higher after the optimization of blade pitch motion;compared with the fixed pitch turbine,the efficiency of variable-pitch turbine is significantly improved by the active blade pitch control;the energy efficiency declines gradually with the growth of speed ratio;besides,compactness has lager effect on the blade motion while the number of blades has little effect on it.
To study the characteristics of attenuation, hydrostatic towage and wave response of the vertical-axis floating tidal current energy power generation device(VAFTCEPGD), a prototype is designed and experiment is carried out in the towing tank. Free decay is conducted to obtain attenuation characteristics of the VAFTCEPGD, and characteristics of mooring forces and motion response, floating condition, especially the lateral displacement of the VAFTCEPGD are obtained from the towing in still water. Tension response of the #1 mooring line and vibration characteristics of the VAFTCEPGD in regular waves as well as in level 4 irregular wave sea state with the current velocity of 0.6 m/s. The results can be reference for theoretical study and engineering applications related to VAFTCEPGD.
