Abstract
The shared mooring system is an anticipated mooring type for the wave energy converter (WEC) arrays, which is considered to effectively reduce the mooring infrastructure cost and ensure the devices’ power performance and survivability. In this paper, the numerical study of oscillating water column (OWC) WEC arrays under various shared mooring systems was introduced. The hydrodynamic motion and power generation performance of the devices were analyzed. The mooring numerical simulation model of the OWC device was established and verified based on the three-dimensional potential flow theory and the lumped mass method. On this basis, the performance of 3, 5, and 7 device arrays with independent mooring systems and shared mooring systems were compared and analyzed. Results show that multiple shared mooring systems demonstrate superior effects on the motion response and energy capture performance of the devices compared with independent mooring array, which improves the effective power capture frequency bandwidth. For example, the average CWR of three OWC array under the two shared mooring systems is 30.2 % and 16.0 % higher than that of the independent mooring system at the main energy capture frequencies, respectively. Although the line tension of the shared mooring system increases.