Abstract
Wave energy converters (WECs) have the potential to significantly contribute to the energy transition, but this strongly depends on their interactions with the resource. For accurate calculations of the power derived from WECs, precise modelling of the wave-structure interaction is essential. The boundary element method (BEM) based on the linear potential flow theory has yielded accurate results at low computational costs when compared to complex Computational Fluid Dynamics methods. Hydrodynamic Analysis of Marine Structures (HAMS) and Capytaine are recently developed open-source BEM frequency domain solvers, originally created for large marine structures. These solvers have since been utilized for studying wave energy converters albeit for very few converter geometries. Owing to the implementation of parallelization in both HAMS and Capytaine, both these solvers could be capable for significantly lower computational costs as compared to the traditional BEM solvers such as Nemoh. This research aims to compare hydrodynamic coefficients and computational costs in Nemoh, HAMS and Capytaine for various WEC geometries.