Experimental study on the dynamic response of a moored floating wave energy device

A detailed experimental investigation conducted on a moored Oscillating Water Column (OWC) wave energy device has been reported in this paper. The experiments were conducted on 1:20 scale model of the wave energy device, which was moored to the bed using 6 mooring lines in a 2m wide (deep and shallow water) wave flume at Ocean Engineering Department, IITM, Chennai. A range of hydrodynamic parameters with different damping ratio of the OWC chamber at scope 4 (length of the mooring line/depth of water) for a constant water depth was used. The effect of non-dimensionalized parameters like non-dimensionlized wave frequency parameter (ω2B/2g) and device breadth to wave length ratio (B/L) on the mooring force and on the efficiency of the wave energy device has been studied. The motion responses and mooring forces were measured and the test results are analysed and presented with discussions in this paper.