Comparison between full-scale measurements and numerical simulations of mooring forces in a floating point-absorbing WEC system

Book chapter, 2019

The design of functional elastic mooring systems for floating point-absorbing Wave Energy Converters (WECs) is important for the WEC’s power capture, the durability and reliability of the mooring system. This study presents results from the OCEANERA-NET project ELASTMOOR where Waves4Power’s WEC WaveEL 3.0 is used as a reference case for full-scale measurements of mooring line forces. The elastic mooring system consists of three mooring legs, where each leg is divided into two mooring lines with an intermediate submerged floater. The WaveEL 3.0 WEC is installed outside Runde in Norway and its mooring forces have been measured continuously between June and November, 2017. A numerical simulation model of the full-scale installation has been developed in the DNV GL software SESAM. The study presents a comparison between the mooring forces from full-scale measurements and simulations for various environmental load conditions. The results are discussed with regards to uncertainties and the prediction capacity of the numerical model.