Abstract
Buoy-type ocean wave energy converters are designed to exhibit resonant responses when subject to excitation by ocean waves. A novel excitation scheme is proposed which has the potential to improve the energy harvesting capabilities of these converters. The scheme uses the incident waves to modulate the mass of the device in a manner which amplifies its resonant response. To illustrate the novel excitation scheme, a simple one-degree of freedom model is developed for the wave energy converter. This model has the form of a switched linear system. After the stability regime of this system has been established, the model is then used to show that the excitation scheme improves the power harvesting capabilities by 2565 percent even when amplitude restrictions are present. It is also demonstrated that the sensitivity of the device's power harvesting capabilities to changes in damping becomes much smaller when the novel excitation scheme is used. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 5058-5069 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Journal of Sound and Vibration |
| Volume | 329 |
| Issue number | 24 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2010 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: The authors would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Steven Shaw for his helpful discussions on parametric excitation, Professor N. Sri Namachchivaya for his helpful suggestions about switched systems, Professor Ron Yeung for his help with wave energy converters, and the reviewers for their constructive criticisms. This research was supported by a grant from the University of California at Berkeley-King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (UCB-KAUST) Academic Excellence Alliance.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.