Study on the influence of heave plate on energy capture performance of central pipe oscillating water column wave energy converter

This paper proposes a novel central pipe oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter (WEC) with a heave plate and investigates the influence of heave plate on energy capture performance of the OWC WEC through numerical methods. First, dynamic equations are established for floater and water column. Then, energy capture performance of the WEC is computed by solving relative motion equations using numerical methods. Wave tank experiments are conducted to validate the proposed numerical models. Finally, the influences of heave plate opening diameter and connecting column length on energy capture performance are investigated based on the proposed numerical models. The results indicate that increasing heave plate opening diameter decreases both the maximum capture width ratio (CWR) and response period. And increasing connecting column length widens the response bandwidth. When the heave plate opening diameter decreases from 350 mm to 0, the maximum CWR increases from 30.05 % to 41.68 % and the response period increases from 1.28 s to 1.72 s. When the connecting column length increases from 225 mm to 600 mm, the response band extends by 0.1 s. The proposed device and the obtained analysis results are of great significance for broadband and efficient wave energy generation.