Influence of the energy extraction system on the kinematics of a WEC: High-fidelity CFD with mooring and power extraction co-simulation

The goal of this work is to describe a novel method-ology to perform an high-fidelity simulation of a pitch based Wave Energy converter (WEC) based on Computational Fluid Dynamics techniques including the computation of the forces and moments caused by mooring lines, and the dynamics effects of the gyroscopic system within the hull. Co-simulation with regular mono-directional wave are performed in three cases: without considering the gyroscope dynamics, then including the latter and, finally, considering also the power extraction and its control logic. With this comparison it is clear that the differences in the dynamic response of the system and in the tensions of the mooring are not negligible and it is therefore necessary to evaluate the system with a high-fidelity model.