WEC-Sim Wave Energy Converter HydrodynamicsNew

Background

Wave energy converters (WECs) must survive 50-year storms while extracting power from irregular seas. Physical tank testing alone cannot cover the design space; reliable time-domain simulation is the workhorse, and WEC-Sim is the open-source standard.

Technical stack

• Simulink/Simscape Multibody for rigid-body dynamics of floats, spars, flaps
• Boundary-element / potential-flow solvers (e.g. WAMIT, Nemoh, AQWA interfaces) for frequency-domain hydrodynamic coefficients
• Convolution integrals for radiation forces; Froude-Krylov and diffraction loads
• Power take-off models: hydraulic, direct-drive linear generator, damping

Where ML accelerates

• Surrogates trained on WEC-Sim sweeps replace time-domain runs in design loops
• Reinforcement-learning controllers are validated against WEC-Sim dynamics
• Extreme-response statistics from batched simulations feed reliability design

Use cases

• Conceptual design of point absorbers, oscillating water columns, attenuators
• Control co-design (CCD) studies for wave energy farms
• Digital twins of offshore assets combining WEC-Sim with measurement data

Resources

• WEC-Sim documentation and theory manual (NREL)
• Example device models and validation papers in the repository