Numerical investigation of scaling effect in two-dimensional oscillating water column wave energy devices for harvesting wave energy

Abstract Oscillating water column (OWC) devices utilise wave-induced oscillation of water column in partially submerged chambers to extract energy of waves in ocean. The principal aim of this paper is to investigate scaling effects of two-dimensional OWC through numerical simulations. The fluid motion under waves is simulated by solving the two-dimensional incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations using finite element method under Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian scheme. To investigate scaling effects, the waves and the OWC are scaled up or down according to Froude number similarity. The turbine is scaled up or down using three different scaling methods: (1) Turbine coefficient remains unchanged, i.e. not scaling the turbine at all; (2) Equivalent pneumatic damping coefficient of the turbine is constant and (3) the two-dimensional turbine coefficient is constant. The numerical results show that method (2) has the smallest effects on the best hydraulic efficiency and method (3) has the smallest effects on the best performance wave number, i.e. the wave number where the OWC receives the largest percentage of the wave energy. The worst scaling method is not scaling the turbine. Because the best performance wave number varies with the model scale in method (1) and (2), it is very likely the scaling effects of the model scale on the hydrodynamic performance at different wave numbers are different from each other. In addition, the effects of the wave height and the chamber volume are studied. Increasing chamber volume causes a reduction of the best performance, however it may improve general performance of OWC because it increases the frequency band of waves with high hydraulic efficiency. Increasing wave height causes a reduction of the hydraulic efficiency.