Abstract
Eddy current brakes provide a versatile way of simulating the power take-off system (PTO) in the model testing of wave energy converters at small scale. These are based on the principle that a conductive material moving perpendicularly to a magnetic field generates a braking force proportional to its velocity.
This was applied in the design of the PTO simulator of a bottom-hinged flap wave energy converter model, at 1/16 scale. The efforts put into the accurate dynamic simulation of the device led to the development of a controllable PTO simulator, which can be applied to other small scale rotating wave energy device models.
A special power source was built to provide the required controllable current intensity to feed the magnetic field generating coils. Different non-linear damping PTO characteristic curves can be simulated by basing the current control on real-time velocity measurement.
The calibration of the system was done by connecting the device to a constant rotating speed motor and measuring the resistent torque produced by the PTO with a torquemeter for different values of current intensity through the coils.