A Technology of Electrical Energy Generated From Ocean Power Using Flexible Piezoelectric Device

Author(s):  
Hidemi Mutsuda ◽  
Kenta Kawakami ◽  
Takayuki Kurokawa ◽  
Yasuaki Doi ◽  
Yoshikazu Tanaka

We have developed a way of harvesting electrical energy from the ocean power, e.g. tide, current, wave, breaking wave and vortex, using a flexible piezoelectric device consisting of piezo-electric polymer film (PVDF), silicon and natural rubber. The flexible piezoelectric device (FPED) is a hydro-electric ocean energy converter designed to convert renewable energy harnessed from ocean energy into usable electricity. The basic concept generating electric power using FPED is to utilize fluid structure interaction, e.g. flattering, flapping and periodic bending, caused by ocean energy. The FPED deformed by kinetic energy of the ocean power stores elastic energy and also converts it to the electric energy. We carried out some experiments using wave tank and the water tunnel with a bluff body. We have confirmed the electricity generated by wave, current and vortex using the FPED. The developed FPED could be a new technology of harvesting electrical energy from the ocean power. A floating platform attached FPED could be coupled with an offshore wind turbine as a hybrid energy system in ocean space.

Author(s):  
Hidemi Mutsuda ◽  
Ryuta Watanabe ◽  
Shota Azuma ◽  
Yoshikazu Tanaka ◽  
Yasuaki Doi

We have developed a way of harvesting electrical energy from ocean power, e.g. tide, current wave, breaking wave and vortex, using a Flexible PiezoElectric Device (FPED) consisting of polyvinyledene fluoride (PVDF) and elastic material such as rubber, silicon and resin. The proposed FPED has a multi-layered structure with a distance δ between FPEDs located away from centerline of the FPED. When the FPED can be easily deformed by ocean power, the PVDF laminated in the FPED can be expanded and compressed and then the internal strain energy can be stored in the FPED. The electric power is generated when the electric polarization occurs in the PVDF. In this study, we have proposed an ocean power generator of EFHAS (Elastic Floating unit with HAnging Structures) consisting of floating unit and hanging unit using the FPEDs to obtain electric power from ocean energy. We investigated a structure of the EFHAS and also examined characteristics of motion and electric performance of the EFHAS (1/50–1/75 scale model. We made clear that the EFHAS could be useful as ocean power generator.


Author(s):  
Hidemi Mutsuda ◽  
Kenta Kawakami ◽  
Masato Hirata ◽  
Yasuaki Doi ◽  
Yoshikazu Tanaka

We have developed a new wave power generator using flexible piezoelectric device (FPED) which is a hydro-electric ocean energy unit designed to convert renewable energy harnessed from ocean energy into usable electricity. In our previous works, the FPED consisting of piezo-electric polymer film (PVDF) is a way of harvesting electrical energy from the ocean power, e.g. tide, current, wave, breaking wave and vortex. The concept of this study is that the existing coastal and ocean structures (i.e. breakwater, submerged obstacle, reef in shallow water and submerged plate in deep water) are utilized as a wave power generator attached with the FPED to make a safety and disaster prevention. We examined the usefulness and electric performance of the FPED excited by waves in experiments.


Author(s):  
Hidemi Mutsuda ◽  
Ryuta Watanabe ◽  
Masato Hirata ◽  
Yasuaki Doi ◽  
Yoshikazu Tanaka

The purpose of this study is to improve FPED (Flexible PiEzoelectric Device) we have developed. The FPED consisting of piezo-electric polymer film (PVDF) is a way of harvesting electrical energy from ocean power, e.g. tide, current, wave, breaking wave and vortex. We also propose an Elastic Floating unit with HAanging Structures (EFHAS) using FPED. The EFHAS consists of floating unit and hanging unit. In this study, we investigated electric performance of FPED and EFHAS and also modified internal structure of FPED to increase electrical efficiency. As a result, Electric performance is increasing with increasing number of PVDFs laminated in FPED. Multilayer type of FPED can rapidly increase electric efficiency. Electric power can be improved by FPED attached a bluff body with relative density. Electric performance of floating type for floating unit of EFHAS is better than that of submerged type. Distance L/λ = 0.4 between floaters of floating unit is suitable for highly electric performance. In hanging unit of EFHAS, it is possible to increase electric power per unit area with increasing number of stairs. In conclusion, we showed the EFHAS with the FPED could be useful for harvesting ocean wave energy.


Author(s):  
Hongzhong Zhu ◽  
Changhong Hu ◽  
Yingyi Liu ◽  
Kangping Liao

With the development of ocean energy exploration, reliable and low cost semi-submersible platforms are expected to develop. The maximum pitching amplitude of a floater for floating offshore wind turbine should be less than a few degrees to avoid fatigue failure. In this paper, a novel conceptual design of a new type semi-submersible with suspensions for suppressing the pitch motion is presented. Many wave energy dissipation devices, such as add-on wave energy converters to a floating platform, could be regarded as the suspension system in our design. Firstly, linear models are applied to approximate the radiation forces and wave exciting forces so that the whole motion system is represented by a state-space model. Then, we show that design of suspensions leads to synthesize a controller via solving a constrained H∞ optimization problem. Finally, numerical examples are performed to verify the design and it can be shown that the pitch motion of the semi-submersible platform is remarkably reduced.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1452 ◽  
pp. 012034
Author(s):  
H M Johlas ◽  
L A Martínez-Tossas ◽  
M A Lackner ◽  
D P Schmidt ◽  
M J Churchfield

Author(s):  
Mohammed Khair Al-Solihat ◽  
Meyer Nahon ◽  
Kamran Behdinan

This paper presents a rigid multibody dynamic model to simulate the dynamic response of a spar floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT). The system consists of a spar floating platform, the moorings, the wind turbine tower, nacelle, and the rotor. The spar platform is modeled as a six degrees-of-freedom (6DOFs) rigid body subject to buoyancy, hydrodynamic and moorings loads. The wind turbine tower supports rigid nacelle and rotor at the tip. The rigid rotor is modeled as a disk spinning around its axis and subject to the aerodynamic load. The generator torque control law is incorporated into the system dynamics to capture the rotor spinning speed response when the turbine is operating below the rated wind speed. The equations of motions are derived using Lagrange's equation in terms of the platform quasi-coordinates and rotor spin speed. The external loads due to hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, and aerodynamics are formulated and incorporated into the equations of motion. The dynamic simulations of the spar FOWT are performed for three load cases to examine the system eigen frequencies, free decay response, and response to a combined wave and wind load. The results obtained from the present model are validated against their counterparts obtained from other simulation tools, namely, FAST, HAWC2, and Bladed, with excellent agreement. Finally, the influence of the rotor gyroscopic moment on the system dynamics is investigated.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhixin Zhao ◽  
Wenhua Wang ◽  
Dongdong Han ◽  
Wei Shi ◽  
Yulin Si ◽  
...  

Abstract A braceless semi-submersible floating platform is proposed for a Technical University of Denmark (DTU) 10-MW wind turbine at moderate water depths with reference to an existing National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5-MW braceless semi-submersible floating platform, and a servo control system for a 10-MW semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) is introduced. To control the ultimate and fatigue loads of the FOWT, a fore-aft tuned mass damper (TMD) installed in the nacelle of the 10-MW semi-submersible FOWT was investigated for vibration alleviation and load reduction. Considering the hydrodynamic and mooring effect, a four degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) (platform surge and pitch motions, tower fore-aft bending, and TMD translation) simplified dynamic model for the 10-MW semi-submersible FOWT is established based on D’Alembert’s principle. Then, the parameter estimation is conducted based on the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm, and the simplified dynamic model was further verified by comparing the output responses with FAST and the proposed model. Furthermore, the exhaustive search (ES) and genetic algorithm (GA) are embedded into the simplified dynamic model to optimize the TMD parameters. Finally, a fully coupled time-domain simulation for all the selected environmental conditions is conducted in FAST, and the vibration suppression performance of the optimized TMD design for the 10-W semi-submersible FOWT was further examined and analyzed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255
Author(s):  
Zhenqing Liu ◽  
Yicheng Fan ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Guowei Qian

DeepCwind semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbines have been widely examined, and in some countries this type of floating offshore wind turbine has been adopted in the construction of floating wind farms. However, the DeepCwind semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbines still experience large surge motion that limits their operational time. Therefore, in this study, a semi-submersible floating platform with different numbers of offset columns, but with the same total weight, based on the DeepCwind prototype is proposed. From the free-decay test, it was found that the number of the floating columns will affect the natural frequency of the platform. Furthermore, the regular wave test in the time domain and the irregular wave test in the frequency domain show that increasing the number of the floating columns will reduce the surge motion greatly, while the effects in the heave and pitch motions are not obvious.


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