Numerical Study of the Efficiency of an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) Device

摘要

The present work presents a numerical study concerned with the efficiency of an oscillating water column-type wave energy converter (OWC-WEC), which transforms the energy from the sea waves to electrical one. The main goal here is the evaluation of the OWC efficiency ranging two parameters: the rate between the device length and the wavelength and the rate between the submerged depth of the device and the wave height. For the numerical solution of the multiphase flow is employed a commercial code, FLUENT?, based on the Finite Volume Method. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) multiphase model is applied for the treatment of the interaction water-air. The computational domain is represented by a wave tank coupled with an OWC device. This coupling enables the analysis of the converter when it is subjected to an incidence of regular waves generated by a wave-maker. A comparison between two and three-dimensional cases is also performed.