Abstract
Wave energy is an extremely large resource, however to date, its harvesting has suffered from, among other things, a high predicted cost of energy. Wave energy converters (WECs) that utilise flexible membranes have the potential to provide similar or better performance to a rigid body WEC but at a lower cost. However, there is currently no single piece of software for the analysis of flexible membrane WECs. A method for analysis of generic flexible membrane WECs has recently been proposed, which combines nonlinear statics analysis with linear frequency domain dynamic analysis. In the dynamic analysis, the internal and external fluids are coupled with the structural deformation and the power take-off (PTO) by the use of generalized modes. Previously, results obtained using this method have been presented for a subset of the full analysis method and a limited range of devices. This paper demonstrates the validity of the method for analysis of a wide range of devices across the flexible membrane WEC design space. An overview of the method is presented along with results for analysis of a range of different flexible membrane WECs, which are compared with published physical models results. The paper also demonstrates some practical issues related to the use of the method.