EFFICIENT CALCULATION OF HYDRODYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF OWC-TYPE DEVICES

A simple model of an OWC-type wave-energy device is used to illustrate a powerful accurate method for computing the hydrodynamic coefficient s when sharp edges are present. The device consists simply of a vertic al partially immersed circular cylinder open at either end, with power being extracted by constricting the flow of the air capped in the cyl inder above the internal free surface. The method involves the use of the theory of pressure distributions for OWC devices and the hydrodyna mical coefficients are computed using an accurate Galerkin method whic h preserves the reciprocity relations.