Numerical and experimental study on hydrodynamic performance of multi-level OWEC

The performance of a multi-level overtopping wave energy converter (OWEC) has been numerically and experimentally investigated in a two-dimensional wave tank in order to study the effects of opening width of additional reservoirs. The device is a fixed OWEC consisting of an inclined ramp together with several reservoirs at different levels. A particle-based numerical simulation utilizing the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is used to simulate the flow behavior around the OWEC. Additionally, an experimental model is also built and tested in a small wave flume in order to validate the numerical results. A comparison in energy captured performance between single-level and multi-level devices has been proposed using the hydraulic efficiency. The enhancement of power capture performance is accomplished by increasing an overtopping flow rate captured by the extra reservoirs. However, a noticeably large opening of the extra reservoirs can result in a reduction in the power efficiency. The overtopping flow behavior into the reservoirs is also presented and discussed. Moreover, the results of hydrodynamic performance are compared with a similar study, of which a similar tendency is achieved. Nevertheless, the LBM simulations consume less computational time in both pre-processing and calculating phases.