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COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
CFD simulation of floating−body dynamics for energy conversion using OpenFOAM
Submission Author:
Ernane Silva , SC
Co-Authors:
Ernane Silva, Nicollas Freitas, Samuel Gonçalves, Thiago Pontin Tancredi, Filipe Dutra da Silva, André Fujarra
Presenter: Nicollas Freitas
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-1000
Abstract
Recent studies show that the global electric energy demand must double until 2050 due to the increase of domestic consumption and the electrification of vehicles. In order to support that, and considering the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the exploration of renewable energy sources has increased considerably and it is expected that by 2035 half of the global electric energy consumption will come from renewable sources. The extraction of energy from the movement of ocean waves has the highest energy density among all renewable energy sources. However, wave energy generation is still not as widely spreaded as its solar and wind counterparts mainly due to cost reasons. Therefore, novel studies and developments must be sought in this field during the coming years and to advance on that design tools are of paramount importance. For instance, hydrodynamic models are required to identify optimal geometric and operational parameters of wave energy converters. In this case, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models become more common every day, providing detailed information about the physics involved. Current models can include even dynamic mesh and fluid-structure interaction, which was unthinkable a few years ago. This paper describes the application of the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM to simulate the motion of two floating bodies subjected to waves in order to design wave energy converters. With the aim of reducing computational cost, a two-dimensional domain was adopted together with static boundary conditions for wave generation and absorption. The wave generation is based on the Stokes wave theory available in the extended OpenFOAM CFD suite OlaFlow. The results show how the relative motion of the floating bodies is affected by the wave and body characteristics and allow a first estimate of the energy conversion potential. Besides, it is shown that the model is suitable for optimization purposes given its relatively low computational cost.
Keywords
wave energy, CFD, OpenFOAM, Floating platforms
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