A Study on Design and Simulation of the Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter Using Mechanical PTO

Abstract

This paper presents a practical design of a wave energy converter (WEC). The WEC is based on an innovative mechanical device power take-off (PTO) which can convert wave energy into electric energy by using a floating buoy. By using cable and pulley mechanism, the WEC can work in high efficiency by capturing wave energy in both surge and heave mode and converting the bidirectional motion of ocean waves into one-way rotation of an electric generator. First, the configuration is presented to describe working principle of the system. Then, the hydrodynamic forces are analyzed in the time domain. Moreover, the coupled mechanical and hydrodynamic model are simulated in Matlab/Simulink to investigate the performance of the proposed design. Finally, simulation results indicate that the proposed WEC can absorb wave energy in high efficiency and can be applied in the realistic condition.