RT Journal Article
T1 Sensitivity of OWC performance to air compressibility
A1 Carballo, Rodrigo
A1 López, Iván
A1 Taveira Pinto, Francisco
A1 Iglesias, Gregorio
K1 Wave energy
K1 Wave power
K1 Oscillating water column
K1 Physical modelling
K1 CFD
K1 Capture-width ratio
AB Air compressibility is often neglected in experimental work due to practical difficulties, even though it is known to affect the performance of OWC wave energy converters. The key question, of course, is to what extent. In this work the impact of air compressibility on the capture width ratio is thoroughly quantified by means of a comprehensive experimental campaign, with no fewer than 330 tests encompassing a wide range of wave conditions and levels of turbine-induced damping, and two experimental set-ups: one designed to account for air compressibility, the other to neglect it. This approach is complemented with the use of the RANS-based CFD model OpenFOAM® to calibrate the pressure-vs-flowrate curves, which enables the flowrate to be determined based on the pressure drop measurements from the physical model. We find that the errors that derive from disregarding air compressibility may lead to either under- or over-predictions of power output, and are highly dependent on the operating conditions, more specifically the wave conditions (sea state) and turbine-induced damping.
PB Elsevier
SN 0960-1481
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32263
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32263
LA eng
NO I. López, R. Carballo, F. Taveira-Pinto, G. Iglesias, Sensitivity of OWC performance to air compressibility, Renewable Energy, Volume 145, 2020, Pages 1334-1347, ISSN 0960-1481, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.06.076.
NO During this work I. López was supported by the postdoctoral grant ED481B 2016/125-0 of the ‘Programa de Axudas á etapa posdoutoral da Xunta de Galicia (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria)’, and G. Iglesias benefited from a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (WAVEIMPACT, PCIG13-GA-2013-618556), The authors are indebted to the Centre for Supercomputing of Galicia (CESGA), Spain, for the use of high-performance computational resources and the support in performing the numerical simulations.
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026