• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.589-597
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• 2015

Wave energy harvesting system using OWC(Oscillating Water Column) and MB (Movable Body) attached at the caisson breakwater was studied. This system was suggested to maximize wave energy extraction using resonant phenomena of oscillating water column and buoy in wave channel (Park et al., 2014). Not only incident waves but also reflected waves from the breakwater can be used as sources of exciting force for harvesting wave energy efficiently. Using Galerkin finite model based on the linear wave theory (Park, 1991), the performance of the system was evaluated for various damping ratios of power take off system. Numerical results show that the proposed system is excellent in efficiency compared with that of conventional system and the performance of the system is governed by the resonance of oscillating water column in the wave channel. In addition, the additional efforts to minimize viscous damping was found to be necessary because viscous damping occurring in the channel and around the moving buoy is significant in generation efficiency.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.863-870
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• 2019

In the GSM method for OWC-MIMO System, it is important to select an activation pattern set(: APS) for the performance optimization in the environment where mutual interference is high depending on the location of the transmitter and receiver. However, due to the high computational complexity, a high cost is paid in selecting the transmission APS. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce the candidate APS by pre-determining basic APS when generating candidate APS. The simulation results show that the proposed method has the same BER performance and reduce the computational complexity by 90% compared to the general GSM method in the high interfering environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.24 no.6_2
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• pp.801-808
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• 2021

In this paper, a numerical analysis was conducted on the effect of the flow control valve of a oscillation water column(OWC) type wave power generator turbine. The OWC wave power turbine operates with compressed air in the air chamber according to the change of wave height. When the wave height changes rapidly, a flow control valve is required due to overload of the turbine and reduced efficiency. Therefore, in this paper, a flow control valve with an opening angle of 60 degrees was installed in the front of the turbine, and the pressure drop, torque, and overall performance were calculated according to the change of turbine RPM and flow rate of turbine inlet. In conclusion, the flow control valve with an opening angle of 60 degrees affects when the turbine rotates at low rotation and the inlet flow rate is large. But it does not have a significant effect on overall turbine performance and it is necessary to find the optimal angle in the future works.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.128-137
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• 2013

Due to the global warming and air pollution, interest in renewable energies has increased in recent years. In particular, the crisis of the depletion of fossil energy resources in the near future has accelerated the renewable energy technologies. Among the renewable energy resources, oceans covering almost three-fourths of earth's surface have an enormous amount of energy. For this reason, various approaches have been made to harness the tremendous energy potential. In order to achieve two purposes: to improve harbor water quality and to use wave energy, this study proposed a sea water exchange structure applying an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) wave generation system that utilizes the air flow velocity induced by the vertical motion of water column in the air chamber as a driving force of turbine. In particular, the airflow velocity in the air chamber was estimated from the time variations of water surface profile computed by using 3D-NIT model based on the 3-dimensional irregular numerical wave tank. The relationship of the frequency spectrums between the computed airflow velocities and the incident waves was analyzed. This study also discussed the characteristics of frequency spectrums in the air chamber according to the presence of the structure, wave deformations by the structure, and the power of the water and air flows were also investigated. It is found that the phase difference exists in the time series data of water level fluctuations and air flow in the air chamber and the air flow power is superior to the fluid flow power.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.237.2-237.2
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• 2010

Although oscillating water column type wave energy devices are nearing the stage of commercial exploitation, there is still much to be learnt about many facets of their hydrodynamic performance. The techniques of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are applied to simulate a wave energy conversion device in free surface such as waves. This research uses the commercially available ANSYS CFX computational fluid dynamics flow solver to model a complete oscillating water column system with savonius turbine incorporated at the rear bottom of the OWC chamber in a three dimensional numerical wave tank. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of an average wave condition on the performance and internal flow of a newly developed direct drive turbine (DDT) model for wave energy conversion numerically. The effects of blade angle and front lip shape on the hydrodynamic efficiency are investigated. The results indicated that the developed models are suitable to analyze the water flow characteristics both in the chamber and in the turbine. For the turbine, the numerical results of torque were compared for the all cases. The results of the testing have also illustrated that simple changes to the front wall aperture shape can provide marked improvements in the efficiency of energy capture for OWC type devices.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.513-528
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• 2013

A floating Oscillating Water Column (OWC) wave energy converter, a Backward Bent Duct Buoy (BBDB), was simulated using a state-of-the-art, two-dimensional, fully-nonlinear Numerical Wave Tank (NWT) technique. The hydrodynamic performance of the floating OWC device was evaluated in the time domain. The acceleration potential method, with a full-updated kernel matrix calculation associated with a mode decomposition scheme, was implemented to obtain accurate estimates of the hydrodynamic force and displacement of a freely floating BBDB. The developed NWT was based on the potential theory and the boundary element method with constant panels on the boundaries. The mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian (MEL) approach was employed to capture the nonlinear free surfaces inside the chamber that interacted with a pneumatic pressure, induced by the time-varying airflow velocity at the air duct. A special viscous damping was applied to the chamber free surface to represent the viscous energy loss due to the BBDB's shape and motions. The viscous damping coefficient was properly selected using a comparison of the experimental data. The calculated surface elevation, inside and outside the chamber, with a tuned viscous damping correlated reasonably well with the experimental data for various incident wave conditions. The conservation of the total wave energy in the computational domain was confirmed over the entire range of wave frequencies.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2010

Oscillating Water Column is one of the most widely used converting systems all over the world. The operating performance is influenced by the efficiencies of the two converting stages in the OWC chamber-turbine integrated system. In order to study the effects of the pressure drop induced by the air turbine, the experiments using the impulse turbine and the orifice device are carried out in the wave simulator test rig. The numerical simulation utilizing the orifice and porous media modules is calculated and validated by the corresponding experimental data. The numerical wave tank based on the two-phase VOF model embedded with the above modules is employed to investigate the wave elevation, pressure variation inside the chamber and the air flow velocity in the duct. The effects of the air turbine on the integrated system and interaction among the wave elevation, pressure and air flow velocities variations are investigated, which demonstrates that the present numerical model are more accurate to be employed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.401-409
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• 2023

Oscillating water column (OWC) type wave power generator system is a power generation system that uses wave energy, a sustainable and renewable energy source. Irregular cycles and wave heights act as factors that make it difficult to secure generation efficiency of the wave power generator system. Recently, research for improving power generation efficiency is being conducted by applying digital twin technology to OWC type wave energy converter system. However, digital twin using sensor data can predict erroneous performance due to uncertainty in the sensor data. Therefore, this study proposes an uncertainty analysis method for sensor data which is used in digital twin to secure the reliability of digital twin prediction results. Uncertainty quantification considering sensor data characteristics and future uncertainty information according to uncertainty propagation were derived mathematically, and confidence interval estimation was performed based on the proposed method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.305-314
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• 2017

Ocean wave energy harvesting is still too expensive despite developing a variety of wave energy converter (WEC) devices. For the cost-effective wave energy harvesting, it can be an effective measure to use existing breakwaters or newly installed breakwaters for both wave control and energy harvesting purposes. In this study, we investigated the functionality of both breakwater and wave-power generator for the oscillating water column (OWC)-type wave energy converter (WEC) installed in a pneumatic floating breakwater, which was originally developed as a floating breakwater. In order to verify the performance of the breakwater as a WEC, the air flow velocity from air-chamber to WEC has to be evaluated properly. Therefore, air flow velocity, wave transformation and motion of floating structure was numerically implemented based on BEM from linear velocity potential theory without considering the compressibility of air within the chamber. Air pressure, meanwhile, was assumed to be fluctuated by the motions of structure and the water level change within air-chamber. The validity of the obtained values can be determined by comparing the previous results from the numerical analysis for different shapes. Based on numerical model results, wave transformation characteristics around OWC system mounted on the fixed and floating breakwaters, and motions of the structure with air flow velocities are investigated. In summary, all numerical results are almost identical to the previous research considering air compressibility. Therefore, it can be concluded that this analysis not considering air compressibility in the air chamber is more efficient and practical method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.171-181
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• 2011

Recently, many studies have been attempted to save the cost of production and to build the ocean energy power generating system. The low-reflection structure with the wall-typed curtain which has a wave power generation system of OWC is known as the most effective energy conversion system. A three-dimensional numerical model was used to understand the characteristics of velocity of flows about compressed air and to estimate the pressure acting on the low-reflection structure due to the short-period waves. The three-dimensional numerical wave flume which is the model for the immiscible two-phase flow was applied in interpretation for this. The numerical simulation showed well about the changes in velocity of compressed air and the characteristics of pressure according to the change in the wave height and depth of the curtain wall. Additionally, the results found that there was the point of the maximum velocity of the compressed air when the reflection coefficient is at its lowest point.