Power Performance Assessment of an Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converter Using Low and High-Fidelity Numerical Models Validated Against Experiments

Abstract In recent years, with continued advancement of computational resources, wave energy converters (WECs) development has increasingly tended toward numerical modeling. Continuing along this path, the present study investigates the capability of high- and low-fidelity models in predicting the hydrodynamic behavior and power performance of an oscillating wave surge converter (OWSC) under various wave conditions and viscous power take off damping (PTO) values. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is employed as a high-fidelity model for accurate simulations of the fluid flow, as it is capable of capturing complex fluid-structure interactions. On the other hand, WEC-Sim is used as a low-fidelity model to provide faster and computationally efficient simulations. Low-fidelity models are capable of predicting the OWSC hydrodynamic performance almost as accurately as high-fidelity in small wave amplitudes, even if the wave period increases. However, this study suggests that increasing the wave amplitude requires comprehensive three-dimensional high-fidelity models, capable of better predicting hydrodynamic parameters. Overall, the 3D SPH model method exhibits the lowest average error in the capture width ratio results compared to the experimental data (about 5%).