Comparing Open-Source BEM solvers for analysing wave energy converters

Abstract

Ocean wave energy has immense potential and can provide at least twice as much electricity as globally produced now due to its high energy density. In order to efficiently extract this energy and make this commercially viable, Wave Energy Converters (WECs) need to interact with the resource in an optimized way for the expanse of sea states. This interaction is critical to power production by these devices and hence an accurate modelling of this is paramount. The Boundary element method (BEM) based on the linear potential flow theory has yielded accurate results at low computational costs when compared to complex Computational Fluid Dynamics methods. Hydrodynamic Analysis of Marine Structures (HAMS) and Capytaine are recently developed open-source BEM frequency domain solvers, originally created for large marine structures. These solvers have since been utilized for studying wave energy converters, though, for very few converter geometries. Owing to the implementation of parallelization in both HAMS and Capytaine, both these solvers could be capable for significantly lower computational costs as compared to the traditional BEM solvers such as Nemoh. This research aims to compare hydrodynamic coefficients and computational costs in Nemoh, HAMS and Capytaine for various WEC geometries.