Abstract
The mooring system is a vital part of a wave energy converter. Nowadays no specific regulations exist about mooring design for these devices. Therefore the interaction between mooring and wave energy converters is still an interesting research topic in order to properly design a mooring line. This paper presents first results for the mooring system study and design of the ISWEC device. A mooring line layout is proposed according to the ISWEC requirements and then models are presented. Since the interaction with the mooring system is important for the correct evaluation of the forces acting on the hull, the research goal is to find the best balance between model accuracy and computational efficiency. Firstly, a simple quasistatic model has been implemented for testing the coupling with the already developed ISWEC numerical model. Later on, the lumped-mass mooring line model MoorDyn is introduced. Eventually, within the hypotheses done and the discussed limits, a comparison of the two different models is done with experimental data obtained in a tank test session on a 1:20 scaled device at Cork.