Coupled mooring analysis for floating wave energy converters using CFD: Formulation and validation

Journal article, 2016

Floating wave energy converters (WECs) operating in the resonance region are stronglyaffected by non-linearities arising from the interaction between the waves, the WECmotion and the mooring restraints. To compute the restrained WEC motion thus requiresa method which readily accounts for these effects. This paper presents a method forcoupled mooring analysis using a two-phase Navier–Stokes (VOF–RANS) model and ahigh-order finite element model of mooring cables. The method is validated againstexperimental measurements of a cylindrical buoy in regular waves, slack-moored withthree catenary mooring cables. There is overall a good agreement between experimentaland computational results with respect to buoy motions and mooring forces. Mostimportantly, the coupled numerical model accurately recreates the strong wave heightdependence of the response amplitude operators seen in the experiments.