Design of a Submerged Disk Wave Energy Converter

An innovative Wave Energy Converter (WEC) device was recently patented by Carter and Ertekin (2011). The device is composed of a submerged disk extending to the seabed trough a fixed structure of columns in shallow water or it may be a floating submerged structure moored to the ocean floor in deep-water applications. In the center of the disk, there is a circular opening, and below it a cylindrical tube is attached to the opening. Waves passing over the disk induce a bidirectional flow inside the tube. A turbine placed in the tube can convert the energy of this flow into mechanical energy that can be transformed into electrical energy. The inventors studied the performance of this device by numerical simulations and conducted experiments at a Froude-scaled model in a laboratory. In this paper, we first carry out numerical calculations of the flow predicting the power generated by a prototype model after maximizing velocities in the opening by varying the dimensions of the device. A preliminary design analysis for an hypothetical application of this device was made. In this phase, we were faced with a number of design issues for this kind of WEC. The result of this work is a general overview of a possible application of the patented device and it is aimed at defining the real performance of it.