Numerical examination of wave power absorption by the Edinburgh Duck wave energy converter device

A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical model is developed to study the power takeoff (PTO) efficiency of an Edinburgh duck wave energy converter (WEC) device by using the OpenFOAM source package. After the numerical validations and the convergent verifications, the characteristics of the duck WEC device for the power takeoff in various incident wave periods are examined. The present numerical investigation indicates that the maximum absorbed power of the duck WEC device is attained in its resonant period, while the maximum efficiency is achieved in a lower period. The influence of the damping coefficient on the PTO is also investigated. The optimal damping coefficient for acquiring more power and better efficiency is determined from a numerical examination.