Garcia-Rosa, Paula B. and Bacelli, Giorgio and Ringwood, John
(2015)
Control-Informed Geometric Optimization of Wave
Energy Converters: The Impact of Device Motion and
Force Constraints.
Energies, 8 (12).
pp. 13672-13687.
ISSN 1996-1073
Abstract
The energy cost for producing electricity via wave energy converters (WECs) is still not competitive with other renewable energy sources, especially wind energy. It is well known that energy maximising control plays an important role to improve the performance of WECs, allowing the energy conversion to be performed as economically as possible. The control strategies are usually subsequently employed on a device that was designed and optimized in the absence of control for the prevailing sea conditions in a particular location. If an optimal unconstrained control strategy, such as pseudo-spectral optimal control (PSOC), is adopted, an overall optimized system can be obtained no matter whether the control design is incorporated at the geometry optimization stage or not. Nonetheless, strategies, such as latching control (LC), must be incorporated at the optimization design stage of the WEC geometry if an overall optimized system is to be realised. In this paper, the impact of device motion and force constraints in the design of control-informed optimized WEC geometries is addressed. The aim is to verify to what extent the constraints modify the connection between the control and the optimal device design. Intuitively, one might expect that if the constraints are very tight, the optimal device shape is the same regardless of incorporating or not the constrained control at the geometry optimization stage. However, this paper tests the hypothesis that the imposition of constraints will limit the control influence on the optimal device shape. PSOC, LC and passive control (PC) are considered in this study. In addition, constrained versions of LC and PC are presented.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Additional Information: |
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0). This work was supported by the Science Foundation Ireland under Grant No. 12/RC/2302
for the Marine Renewable Energy Ireland (MaREI) Centre. |
| Keywords: |
wave energy; power optimization; optimal geometry; control; constraints; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering > Electronic Engineering |
| Item ID: |
9390 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.3390/en81212386 |
| Depositing User: |
Professor John Ringwood
|
| Date Deposited: |
19 Apr 2018 15:24 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Energies |
| Publisher: |
MDPI |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Funders: |
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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