Design comparison and effects of a chamber structure on wave dissipation

Abstract

Among all the ocean energy sources that have been widely studied, chamber structures such as oscillating water column (OWC) technologies are effective and lowcost methods to develop hundreds of wave power generation devices as the disadvantage is its lack of efficiency. Even if the OWC system does not perform any power generation operations, it is a wave-absorbing structure. Assessing the result and benefits for a specific design type of an OWC power-generation can be made by observation of the water surface fluctuation in the air chamber or the simulation and evaluation of the output airflow. A large part of the wave energy may be blocked by the structure’s acting chamber or could be dissipated during the interaction of the waves in the air chamber, which affects the actual power generation benefit evaluation. Nevertheless, a better wave attenuation structure may present a relatively poor design of the OWC generator chamber. A series of experiments were conducted with regular and irregular wave conditions to study the effects of energy dissipation caused by a chamber structure under varied barrier and orifice designs.