Active Control of Wave Energy Convertors

Wave energy conversion is a promising and sustainable way of generating both power and potable water. The waters around the UK are particularly energetic and many are ideal locations for wave energy devices A great deal of research has been invested over the last several decades into wave energy conversion devices. This has been mainly focused on the development of the mechanisms themselves. Recently it has been discovered that purely passive wave energy devices can only generate energy efficiently at certain conditions and that there is a need for active control technology to allow successful generation under a variety of common sea conditions.
The development of active control algorithms for such devices has been, however, rather problematic and even promising control systems have run into difficulties in the face of nonlinear actuators and problems with predicting sea conditions. As a result, few wave energy devices have been successfully deployed.

This research will develop new algorithms which enable wave energy convertors to function efficiently in a variety of sea states encountered around the UK. The research will build on previous research developed by the supervisors and will employ advanced techniques from nonlinear control, prediction and estimation in order to construct effective on-line control algorithms. The merits and deficiencies of the algorithms will then be assessed on high-fidelity fluid dynamics models, which are becoming the gold-standard for validation in the wave energy community.