Abstract
The shape of the submerged body on a two-body wave energy converter is studied in this paper. For this study, varying shapes and sizes of the submerged body are investigated to see the influence the submerged body has on the absorption power of a two-body system. Three different submerged body shapes are investigated; plate, cylinder and sphere. The hydrodynamic parameters for the varying shapes and sizes of the submerged body are calculated using boundary element method software (WAMIT). The two-body dynamics are modelled in WEC-Sim. Simulations were completed for both regular and irregular wave conditions. It is found that the maximum power for each shape will occur at a certain mass ratio. It is also found that for small to no viscous effects, the power of the two-body system can exceed that of a single body system. Small viscous effects however become unrealistic with increasing submerged body size. Simulations show the cylinder performing the best, the sphere performing slightly worse than the cylinder, and the plate performing the worst.