The Rio floating point absorber (FPA) is designed for a reference site located near an island offshore Rio de Janeiro. According to the reference site characteristics, a two-body floating point absorber concept design is chosen to convert ocean wave energy into electrical power. An innovative procedure aiming at finding an optimal shape adapted to predefined wave climate conditions, using the Design of Experiments (DOE) method, is applied. A simple linear damper model is used to represent the Power Take-Off (PTO) mechanism. The optimization procedure is divided into Buoy and support (spar/plate) steps, so the optimized buoy is determined first and then a proper support is determined to reach a satisfactory two-body FPA system. The nonlinearities are not considered in this study and linear Numerical models are developed using AQWA/ANSYS and Minitab software in frequency domain. Finally, a preliminary optimized model of the two-body FPA is determined in accordance with the particular sea site information of the Rio de Janeiro.
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