The choice of geometric constraints value applied in the constructal design for Oscillating Water Column device
Mateus das Neves Gomes1; Matheus José de Deus1; Elizaldo dos Santos Domingues2; Liércio André Isoldi2; Luiz Alberto Oliveira Rocha3
1 Instituto Federal do Paraná; 2 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande; 3 Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos
doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2017-0547
Resumo
The present paper presents a two-dimensional numerical investigation about the fluid dynamic behavior of an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) Wave Energy Converter (WEC) into electrical energy. Constructal design is employed with the aim to perform a geometric evaluation of an OWC WEC. The objective function is to maximize the energy conversion. The hydropneumatic chamber volume (VE) and the total OWC volume (VT) are adopted as geometric constraints, having constant values during the optimization process. The goal is to analyze the influence of the choice of this geometric constraints value on the OWC performance. For this purpose, the Constraint Variation (CV) is considered. For this, different values defined from the volume formed by the height and the incident wavelength will be tested. To do so the degrees of freedom H1/L (ratio between height and length of the hydropneumatic chamber), H2/l (ratio between height and length of the chimney) and H3 (OWC submergence) are kept constant. For the numerical solution it was used the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) commercial code FLUENT®, based on the Finite Volume Method (FVM). The multiphasic Volume of Fluid (VOF) model was applied to tackle with the water-air interaction. The computational domain is represented by the OWC WEC coupled with the wave tank. Preliminarily, it is intended to obtain a theoretical recommendation about the constant value for the application of constructal design, aiming the maximization of the energy conversion from the incident waves. The results showed that when CV = 1.75 the RMS hidropneumatic power available is maximum.
Palavras-chave: Constructal design; geometric constraint; Oscillating water column