CFD study of the overtopping discharge of the Wave Dragon wave energy converter

Paper in proceeding, 2015

The Wave Dragon is a floating Wave Energy Converter (WEC) working by the overtopping principle. The overtopping discharge has been determined by model scale experiments in wave basins. In the present study we numerically simulate the overtopping behavior of the Wave Dragon device using a VOF based incompressible Euler/Navier-Stokes solver in the OpenFOAM® framework. We present simulations of: (i) a complete sea state for different crest heights, and (ii) regular waves for different wave conditions and crest heights. The simulations compare reasonably well with the experimental data, albeit the irregular wave simulations predict a larger overtopping discharge than observed in the experiments.