Effect of the Back Wall Draft on the Performance of Oscillating Water Column for Wave Energy Extraction

There are different methods to extract energy and generating electricity from waves, which one of the simplest and most practical methods is oscillating water column (OWC). The OWC system consists of a chamber in which the wave motion inside the chamber produces a positive and negative dynamic pressure. This pressure causes turbine rotation placed at the end of the duct. In this study, three physical models; without back wall, 50 mm and 100 mm wall draft at different frequencies were used to investigate the effect of the back wall draft on the system performance. In addition, dimensional analysis has been performed to estimate the dynamic pressure based on the effective parameters. In order to evaluate the system efficiency and present the dynamic pressure formula based on dimensional analysis, the dynamic pressure at the end of chamber in both inhale and exhale modes were measured. The results of this research showed that the existence of back wall causes a significant increase in dynamic pressure and as the wall height increases, the system performance improves. In the inhale mode, the presence of the back wall causes an increase in the pressure ratio at some frequencies up to two times and for exhale mode up to four times. Based on the formula derived from dimensional analysis and sensitivity analysis, the wave height and the back wall draft have the most effectiveness on dynamic pressure. The results show in order to obtain the best system efficiency, the height of the back wall draft should be determined according to the wave height and frequency.