Efficient Calculation of Hydrodynamic Properties of OWC-Type Devices

Abstract

A simple model of an OWC-type wave-energy device is used to illustrate a powerful accurate method for computing the hydrodynamic coefficients when sharp edges are present. The device consists simply of a vertical partially immersed circular cylinder open at either end, with power being extracted by constricting the flow of the air trapped in the cylinder above the internal free surface. The method involves the use of the theory of pressure distributions for OWC devices and the hydrodynamical coefficients are computed using an accurate Galerkin method which preserves the reciprocity relations.