Abstract
The authors are developing a motion of floater body type wave energy converter of the float-counterweight system. This consists of the driving pulley, wire, float and counterweight suspended from idler pulleys and rachet mechanism. Though it has succeeded in solving the major structural strength problem in which the floats would slam against adjacent structure(s) by wave load acting horizontally. In order to overcome this problem. We propose a new system in which the wire transmitting the power is wound around the pulleys and the float receiving the wave power is pulled by the wire from both its upper and lower ends to avoid the occurrence of slackening during the wave cycle. In the paper, we developed the dynamics model for the proposed system. Energy gain has been calculated for realistic wave conditions and compared with the original float-counterweight device. The important differences from the float-counterweight system are that (1) both upward and downward motions of water surface can be utilized without problem. (2) slackening of energy gain and wire tension are effectively suppressed, and (4) for the same time averaged energy gain, the maximum wire tension is fairly lowered.
