Abstract
The wave excitation force is required in some control algorithms of wave energy converters. Excitation force is not, however, directly measurable. Therefore, to obtain excitation force information for control implementation, a number of excitation force estimators have been developed. The estimation performance is usually validated by low-fidelity simulations. This paper assesses the performance of a wave estimator in a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based Numerical Wave Tank (CNWT), where the estimator collects necessary measurements inline with the high-fidelity simulation. The proposed simulation framework can be directly applied for a controlled wave energy converter. Numerical simulations are conducted on the implemented estimator, and the estimated excitation force is compared with a benchmark force that is extracted from a diffraction test.