Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Review

Oscillating-water-column wave energy converters and air

turbines: A review
Anto ~o*, Joa

nio F.O. Falca ~o C.C. Henriques
IDMEC, LAETA, Instituto Superior T

ecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The ocean waves are an important renewable energy resource that, if extensively exploited, may
Received 9 March 2015 contribute significantly to the electrical energy supply of countries with coasts facing the sea. A wide
Received in revised form variety of technologies has been proposed, studied, and in some cases tested at full size in real ocean
18 July 2015
conditions. Oscillating-water-column (OWC) devices, of fixed structure or floating, are an important class
Accepted 29 July 2015
Available online 25 August 2015
of wave energy devices. A large part of wave energy converter prototypes deployed so far into the sea are
of OWC type. In an OWC, there is a fixed or floating hollow structure, open to the sea below the water
surface, that traps air above the inner free-surface. Wave action alternately compresses and de-
Keywords:
Wave energy
compresses the trapped air which is forced to flow through a turbine coupled to a generator. The paper
Oscillating water column presents a comprehensive review of OWC technologies and air turbines. This is followed by a survey of
Air turbines theoretical, numerical and experimental modelling techniques of OWC converters. Reactive phase con-
Modelling trol and phase control by latching are important issues that are addressed, together with turbine rota-
Control tional speed control.
Review © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction of wave energy converter (WEC) was sometimes known as the

Masuda device. The main advantage of the OWC versus most other
The ocean waves are an important renewable energy resource WECs is its simplicity: the only moving part of the energy conver-
that, if extensively exploited, may contribute significantly to the sion mechanism is the rotor of a turbine, located above water level,
electrical energy supply of countries with coasts facing the ocean rotating at a relatively high velocity and directly driving a con-
[1]. A wide variety of technologies has been proposed, studied, and ventional electrical generator. OWCs are a major class of wave en-
in some cases tested at full size in real ocean conditions [2e5]. The ergy converters, possibly the class that has been most extensively
mechanical process of energy absorption from the waves requires a studied and with the largest number of prototypes so far deployed
moving interface, involving (i) a partly or totally submerged mov- into the sea.
ing body and/or (ii) a moving airewater interface subject to a time- In almost all OWCs, the air alternately flows from the chamber
varying pressure. In the latter case, there is a fixed or oscillating to the atmosphere and back, although in some concepts the flow is
hollow structure, open to the sea below the water surface, that in closed circuit. Unless rectifying valves are used, which is widely
traps air above the inner free-surface; wave action alternately regarded as unpractical except possibly in small devices like navi-
compresses and decompresses the trapped air which forces air to gation buoys, the turbines are self-rectifying, i.e. their rotational
flow through a turbine coupled to a generator. Such a device is direction remains unchanged regardless of the direction of the air
named oscillating-water-column (OWC). Although the concept was flow. Several types of such special turbines have been developed.
already known in the 1940s, this designation seems to have The axial-flow Wells turbine, invented in the mid-1970s, is the
appeared for the first time in published paper form in 1978 [6] and most popular self-rectifying turbine, but other types, namely self-
has been widely used ever since, even if the moving water inside rectifying impulse turbines, have also been proposed, studied and
the structure is far from shaped like a column. Before that, this type used.
Apart from reviews on WECs in general [2e5], more specific
reviews on OWCs can be found in Refs. [7,8]. Reviews on air tur-
bines for OWCs were published in Refs. [9e13]. A detailed historical
* Corresponding author.
description, until about 1995, of the development of wave energy
~o).
E-mail address: [email protected] (A.F.O. Falca

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2015.07.086
0960-1481/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1392 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca

Nomenclature t time
T torque
U blade velocity
Roman letters V absolute flow velocity (Section 3)
A added mass V air chamber volume (Section 4)
B radiation force coefficient w mass flow rate
c blade chord (Section 3) x vertical coordinate
D turbine rotor diameter X complex amplitude of x
E energy per unit mass (Section 3)
fe, fr excitation force, radiation force Greek letters
Fe, Fr complex amplitudes of fe, fr a absolute flow velocity angle
g acceleration of gravity b relative flow velocity angle
G radiation conductance h turbine efficiency
H radiation susceptance P dimensionless turbine power
k polytropic exponent r density
m mass s standard deviation (or rms)
p pressure f flow rate coefficient (Section 3)
P complex amplitude of p F dimensionless flow rate
Pt turbine power j pressure coefficient (Section 3)
q volume flow rate J dimensionless pressure head
Q complex amplitude of q u radian frequency
S inner free-surface area U rotational speed
t cascade pitch (Section 3)

conversion in general, and OWCs in particular, can be found in Ref. rectifying valve arrangements; in 1985e86, three unidirectional
[14], a book written from a non-technical point of view by a free- turbines were tested together with two self-rectifying turbines.
lance journalist. In Europe, studies to develop large scale WECs were initiated about
The present review paper concentrates on what is specific of 1973, shortly after the oil crisis. An ambitious government program
OWC wave energy converters. Issues like moorings, electrical started in UK in 1975, the aim being a large, 2 GW wave energy plant
equipment and environmental impact (except air turbine noise) [14,19]. The development of several types of WECs was funded,
that are common to other wave energy technologies are left out. A including OWCs. The National Engineering Laboratory (NEL), in
review of OWC technologies is presented in Section 2. This is fol- Scotland, studied different concepts for a large OWC plant. This
lowed, in Section 3, by a review of air turbines for OWC applica- converged into a design consisting of a set of bottom-standing
tions, especially self-rectifying turbines. Section 4 is devoted to structures, shaped as a breakwater, each housing a series of OWCs,
theoretical, numerical and experimental modelling techniques of Fig. 4 (by then, the self-rectifying Wells turbine had already been
OWC converters. Phase control and rotational speed control are invented). The British wave energy program was abruptly terminated
dealt with in Section 5. Conclusions are presented in Section 6. in 1982, without any full-sized prototype having been constructed.
The less ambitious Norwegian program went on to install in
2. OWC technology 1985 a full-sized OWC integrated into a cliff at Toftestallen, near
Bergen (Fig. 5). The plant was equipped with a vertical-axis Wells
2.1. Early developments until 1990 turbine, and was nominally rated at 500 kW. Nothing was pub-
lished about the plant performance, but it was unofficially known
Yoshio Masuda (1925e2009) (Fig. 1), a Japanese navy officer, that it was rather lower than expected. The plant was destroyed in
may be regarded as the father of modern wave energy technology, 1988 during a storm due to failure of the bolted connection of the
with studies in Japan since the second half of the 1940s. He steel structure to the concrete foundation. In the following years,
developed a navigation buoy powered by wave energy, equipped until the early 1990s, the activity in Europe remained mainly at the
with an air turbine (Fig. 2), which was in fact what was later named academic level, the most visible achievement being a small (75 kW)
as a (floating) OWC [15e17]. Such buoys were commercialized in OWC shoreline prototype, equipped with a Wells turbine, deployed
large numbers in Japan since 1965 (and later in USA), and were the at the island of Islay, Scotland (commissioned in 1991), Fig. 6 [20].
first wave energy devices successfully deployed into the sea. Before that, a shore-fixed OWC (chamber area about 45 m2)
Masuda's navigation buoys were equipped with a conventional equipped with a 40 kW Wells turbine (previously tested in Kaimei)
unidirectional air turbine, which required a system of rectifying was installed in 1983 in the Sea of Japan, at Sanze 1990 [17]. This
valves (Fig. 2). was followed, in Asia, by the installation, about 1990, of two larger
The first large-scale WEC to be deployed into the sea was the OWC prototypes: a 60 kW converter integrated into a breakwater at
Kaimei, another creation of Yoshio Masuda, built for the Japan the port of Sakata, Japan, (Fig. 7) [21,22] and a bottom-standing
Marine Science and Technology Centre (JAMSTEC). Kaimei was a 125 kW plant at Trivandrum, India, (Fig. 8) [23]. Both were equip-
large barge (80 m
12 m, 820 ton) that had thirteen OWC open- ped with Wells turbines. Later, the Indian plant was used to test
bottom chambers built into the hull, each having a water plane different types of air turbines, including impulse turbines [24]. The
area of 42e50 m2 (Fig. 3). It was deployed off the western coast of Sakata OWC was the first (and for many years only) case of inte-
Japan in 1978e80 and again in 1985e86 [17,18]. Eight unidirec- gration of a wave energy converter into a breakwater, as a way of
tional air turbines were tested in 1978e80 with various non-return sharing the costs of the structure. This conception was recently
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A.F.O. Falca 1393

Yoshio Masuda and his team then devised other concepts for floating
OWCs. The main outcome of this exercise was the Backward Bent
Duct Buoy (BBDB) [17]. The BBDB is a floating device with an L-
shaped OWC, a buoyancy caisson-type module, an air chamber and
an air turbine driving an electrical generator (Fig. 9). Since there is no
vertical central tube, the converter does not need deep water for
deployment. Devices with the submerged duct opening facing the
incident waves were first studied, with no plans to test a backward
facing duct. Then, quite surprisingly, it was found that a better per-
formance could be achieved by positioning the device with its back
facing the waves, as shown in Fig. 9. Laboratory tests, with a model
2.41 m long, were first performed in Japan about 1986 [17].

2.2. Developments since the early 1990s

2.2.1. Fixed-structure OWCs

The situation in Europe was dramatically changed by the decision
Fig. 1. Yoshio Masuda in 2001.
made in 1991 by the European Commission of including wave energy
in their R&D program on renewable energies. This lead to the basic
adopted in Spain and Italy (see Section 2.2.2). studies, followed by the design and construction, of two full-sized
The Kaimei tests revealed that, although the efficiency of the air fixed-structure OWC plants (the so-called European pilot plants),
turbines was not far from what was expected, the hydrodynamic one on the island of Pico, Azores, Portugal, and the other on the island
performance of wave energy absorption was quite disappointing. of Islay, Scotland, UK. Both were equipped with Wells turbines. The
Pico plant, rated 400 kW, was completed in 1999 and is still opera-
tional. It was built, standing on the sea bottom, adjacent to a vertical
light generator cliff (Fig. 10) [25]. The Islay plant, completed in 2000 and rated
500 kW, was built in a recess carved into a rocky cliff (Fig. 11) [26].
valve valve Another shoreline OWC plant, rated 100 kW, was built in 2001 in
turbine Guangdong Province, China (Fig. 12) [27]. A few years earlier, a large
nearshore bottom-standing OWC (named OSPREY), rated 1 MW, was
valve valve destroyed by the sea shortly after having been towed and sunk into
place near the Scottish coast in 1995. A large bottom-standing OWC,
the greenWAVE, rated 1 MW, was recently constructed by the
Australian company Oceanlinx (Fig. 13). An accident to the airbags
supporting the 3000-tonne structure occurred in March 2014 when
tube the plant was being towed from Port Adelaide to Port MacDonnell, in
western Australia, forcing the plant to be left aground.
A recently completed bottom-standing OWC, rated 500 kW, was
tube installed at Yongsoo, about 1 km off the coast of Jeju Island, South
Korea (Fig. 14). The plant is 37 m long and 31.2 m wide.
mooring It has been found since the early 1980s that the wave energy
line absorption process can be enhanced by extending the chamber
structure by protruding (natural or man-made) walls in the direc-
Fig. 2. Layout of Masuda's navigation buoy (based on [10]). On the right-hand-side, tion of the waves, forming a harbour or a collector [28,29]. This
details of the air flow through the turbine and rectifying valves.
concept was put into practice in some of the early OWC prototypes,

Fig. 3. The Kaimei.

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A.F.O. Falca

Fig. 4. The design of the NEL breakwater OWC.

standing nearshore prototype, whose structure was made of steel,

was tested at Port Kembla, Australia, in 2005 [30] (Fig. 15).

2.2.2. Breakwater-integrated OWCs

The design and construction of the structure are the most
critical issues in fixed-structure OWC technology, and the most
influential on the economics of energy produced from the waves.
The integration of the plant structure into a breakwater for coastal
or harbour protection has several advantages: the construction
costs are shared, and the access for construction, operation and
maintenance of the wave energy plant becomes much easier. This
has been done successfully for the first time in the harbour of
Sakata, Japan, in 1990 (Fig. 7) [21], where one of the caissons
making up the breakwater had a special shape to accommodate
the OWC and the mechanical and electrical equipment. The option
of the “breakwater OWC” was adopted in the breakwater con-
structed at the port of Mutriku, in northern Spain (2008e10) [31],
with 16 chambers and 16 Wells turbines rated 18.5 kW each
(Fig. 16).
A different geometry for an OWC embedded into a breakwater
was proposed by Boccotti [32], with an OWC that is long in the wave
crest direction but narrow (small aperture) in the fore-aft direction.
The OWC cross-section is U-shaped, with its outer opening facing
upwards (Fig. 17). An advantage of this conception is that it allows
the total length of the water column to be increased without placing
the opening too far below the sea surface. This type of OWC-
breakwater is being constructed at the harbour of Civitavecchia
(near Rome), Italy (Fig. 17), with 17 caissons and 136 OWCs, and is
planned to be adopted for new breakwaters in Italy [33e35].

2.2.3. Floating-structure OWCs

Since the early model tests in Japan in the mid-1980s, the BBDB
concept has been object of considerable interest in several coun-
tries (Europe, Japan, South Korea, USA, China, India), with theo-
retical/numerical and experimental studies [36e40]. A 1:4th-scale
BBDB OWC (the OE Buoy) was tested in Galway Bay, Ireland, be-
tween 2008 and 2011 (Fig. 18) [41]. It was equipped first with a
Fig. 5. Shoreline OWC at Toftestallen, near Bergen, Norway, about 1985. Wells turbine and later with an axial-flow self-rectifying impulse
turbine [41,42].
namely in Toftestallen, Norway (Fig. 5) and Trivandrum, India The Mighty Whale, another floating OWC converter, was
(Fig. 8). The Australian company Energetech developed a technol- developed by the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center. The
ogy using a parabolic-shaped collector for this purpose. A bottom- device consisted of a floating structure (length 50 m, breadth 30 m,
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Fig. 6. Shoreline OWC on the island of Islay, Scotland, rated 75 kW, commissioned in 1991 (courtesy of M. Folley).

Fig. 7. OWC plant integrated into a breakwater at Sakata harbour, Japan, 1990. Rated power 60 kW.

draught 12 m, displacement 4400 ton) which had three air cham- air turbine. During the tests, only two turbines (of different types)
bers located at the front, side by side, and buoyancy tanks (Fig. 19). were installed (Fig. 20).
Each air chamber was connected to a Wells air turbine. The total The concept of an axisymmetric floating OWC, consisting of a
rated power was 110 kW. The device was deployed near the mouth relatively long vertical tube, open at both ends, attached to a floater,
of Gokasho Bay, in Mie Prefecture, Japan, in 1998 and tested for has been considered since the early pioneers of wave energy con-
several years [43,44]. version. The length of the tube determines the resonance frequency
The Australian company Oceanlinx deployed, from February to of the inner water column. This device, sometimes named OWC
May 2010, off Port Kembla, Australia, a one-third-scale grid-con- spar-buoy, was object of two of the earliest journal papers devoted
nected model of the 2.5 MW full-scale OWC device, the Mk3, which to the theoretical modelling of wave energy converters [45,46] and
(like the Kaimei three decades earlier) is a floating platform with is analysed by McCormick in his pioneer book [47]. Several types of
several OWC chambers (in this case eight chambers) each with an wave-powered navigation buoys have been based on this concept
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Fig. 8. Bottom-standing OWC installed in 1990 at Trivandrum, southern India. Rated power 125 kW.

air turbine device, using a water turbine of cross-flow type instead of an air
turbine, was studied in Ref. [55]. Another pitching device with what
can be considered as an interior OWC is described and theoretically
modelled in Ref. [56]. It consists of a buoyant tethered submerged
buoyancy
wave circular cylinder which is allowed to pitch freely about an axis
below its centre. Within the body of the cylinder a fluid half fills an
direction annular tank. The pitching motion of the cylinder in waves induces
a sloshing motion inside the tank which in turns drives an air
turbine connecting air chambers above the two isolated internal
free surfaces.
An axisymmetric WEC recently proposed and analysed in Ref.
Fig. 9. Schematic representation of the Backward Bent Duct Buoy (BBDB). [57] consists in an air-filled box that is fixed to the sea bottom or is
floating (Fig. 23). The moving interface between the enclosed air
and the surrounding sea water may be a rigid surface mounted on
flexible bellows, or a rigid surface connected to the box walls in
[16,48], which has also been considered for larger scale energy
the manner of a loudspeaker diaphragm, or it may be made
production [49]. A report prepared for the British Department of
completely out of a flexible membrane. The box enclosed air space
Trade and Industry in 2005 [50] compared several types of floating
V1 is connected to the atmosphere by an OWC whose walls are co-
OWCs for electricity generation in an Atlantic environment and
axial tubes, an air volume V2 and an air turbine (Fig. 23). The OWC
considered the OWC spar-buoy to be the lowest risk and most
and the air compressibility play essential roles in the device dy-
economic option for further development. The OWC spar-buoy was
namics. The required air volume is larger for the bottom-fixed
object of optimization studies that showed the advantage of the
device whose frequency response width was found to be sub-
tube being tapered at its lower part rather than cylindrical (Fig. 21)
stantially wider than that the floating version.
(see Refs. [51,52]).

2.2.5. Multi-OWC devices

2.2.4. Floating structure WECs with interior OWC Apart from OWCs integrated into breakwaters, other WECs have
Some WEC configurations have been proposed and studied in been studied consisting of multiple OWCs. In some cases, several air
which the OWC is enclosed in the floating structure and is not chambers share a single unidirectional conventional air turbine,
connected to the outer sea water. which requires low pressure and high pressure air ducts and
The U-Gen device consists of an asymmetric floater with an rectifying air valves.
interior U-tank partially filled with water and two lateral air The Seabreath, under development at Padova University, Italy
chambers connected by a duct. The motion of the U-shaped OWC, [58], is a floating attenuator, i.e. its elongated structure is aligned
mainly induced by the pitching of the floater, forces the air through with the propagation direction of the incident waves (Fig. 24). It
the duct where a self-rectifying air turbine is installed to absorb the comprises a set of rectangular chambers with open bottom. Each
energy (Fig. 22). A 1:16th-scale model, 1.25 m long, was tested in OWC air chamber is connected by non-return valves to two longi-
2010 at the IFREMER wave tank, in Brest, France [53]. Results from tudinal ducts (high pressure and low pressure) that feed a con-
theoretical modelling are reported in Ref. [54]. A somewhat similar ventional unidirectional air turbine.
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A.F.O. Falca 1397

Fig. 10. Back view of the 400 kW OWC plant on the island of Pico, Azores, Portugal, 1999.

Fig. 11. LIMPET OWC plant, rated 500 kW, installed in 2000 on the island of Islay, Scotland, UK.

The LEANCON is another multi-OWC device. The OWCs are ar- hydroelastic responses of very large floating structures (VLFS). For a
ranged in two rows under two beams connected to each other in a review see Ref. [64].
V-shaped fashion (Fig. 25). As in Seabreath, each OWC chamber is
connected by non-return valves to two ducts that feed a conven- 2.3. Concluding remarks
tional unidirectional air turbine. Model tests were performed in the
deep wave tank of Aalborg University, in Denmark, using a 1:40th- The OWCs deployed so far on the shoreline may be regarded as
scale model with a total of 120 OWC chambers or pipes [59]. essentially demonstration prototypes and some are now employed
A largely similar, although substantially smaller, device was as experimental infrastructures. The access on foot is easy and, at
numerically simulated and model tested at scale 1:50 at the large least for some of them, the special conditions at their location
oceanic basin of the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre, (including wave energy concentration effects) are not easily repli-
located at University College Cork, Ireland [60]. The 32 OWC cable elsewhere. Some of these plants and their equipment sur-
chambers are arranged along the two legs of a 90-degree V-shaped vived for many years (the Pico plant is still operational after 16
floating structure. Cross trusses between the two legs of the plat- years) and demonstrated the survivability of their technologies
form provide the necessary structural strength to enable the plat- under very harsh conditions.
form to survive sea conditions. The two most powerful wave energy devices constructed so far
The capacity of OWCs to absorb wave energy prompted re- (the Osprey in UK and the greenWAVE in Australia, both rated
searchers [61e63] to propose the use of OWCs in reducing the 1 MW) were bottom-standing nearshore plants. Both were
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Fig. 12. 100 kW shoreline OWC built in 2001 in Guangdong Province, China [27].

Fig. 13. Oceanlinx greenWAVE, Australia, rated power 1 MW. In Port Adelaide, before being towed to Port MacDonnell, 2014.

wrecked in disastrous deployment operations, in 1995 and 2014 fixed-structure OWCs, from the economical, constructional and
respectively, This indicates that such operations are difficult and operational points of view. Naturally not all breakwaters are suitable
can be hazardous. The recent and successful deployment of the for that, because of their type, location and orientation with respect to
500 kW bottom-standing OWC at Jeju Island, South Korea, shows incident waves. The OWC breakwaters are being seriously considered
that such difficulties can be overcome. for northern Spain (and not only at Basque Country) and for Italy (in
Integration into a breakwater is probably the easiest solution for spite of the low wave energy levels in the Mediterranean).
Fig. 14. 500 kW bottom-standing plant at Yongsoo, Jeju Island, South Korea, completed in 2015. Above: back view. Below: perspective section.

Fig. 15. Oceanlinx bottom-standing OWC, Australia, about 2005.

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A.F.O. Falca

Fig. 16. Multi-chamber OWC plant integrated into a breakwater, Mutriku harbour, Basque Country, Spain, 2008e10.

As for floating oscillating-body devices, offshore OWCs have The hydrodynamic process of energy absorption from the waves
been proposed and developed with a wide range of configurations. by an OWC device is related to the interference between the inci-
The relative simplicity is their most obvious advantage. The OWC dent wave field and the radiated waves produced by the motion of
spar-buoy competes directly with vertical-axis two-body con- the body and/or the motion of the OWC. It can be said that a good
verters like the PowerBuoy, the water column playing the role of wave energy absorber must be a good wave radiator. Obviously, in
the inner body. Unlike the spar-buoy, the BBDB OWC and other fixed-structure devices, the wave radiation is induced only by the
small draught OWCs can be deployed into relatively shallow water, water column motion. Almost the same can be said of OWCs
which may be an important advantage in some coastal regions like mounted on a very large floating structure. The opposite happens
the South American Atlantic coasts. with OWC spar-buoys if the bottom opening of the tube is more
Large floating structures with long rows of OWCs are being than say 40 m from the sea surface, and only the oscillating floater
studied. From the viewpoint of energy production costs, they are radiates waves. In devices, like the BBDB, the contributions from
possibly more expensive than dual-purpose OWC breakwaters, and the structure motions and the water column oscillations are com-
their access for operation and maintenance is less easy. However, parable, which may be regarded as a positive feature.
they exploit a more energetic resource offshore, and their location
is not dependent on harbour protection convenience. 3. Air turbines
Converters with internal water column are at early stages of
development. It is too soon for comparisons with more “conven- 3.1. Introduction
tional” OWC technologies. Having the air turbine protected from
the corrosive and mechanical effects of sea water may be one of More or less conventional unidirectional flow turbines (possibly
their advantages. Francis turbines or axial-flow turbines) can be used to equip OWCs
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Fig. 17. Above: cross section of U-shaped OWC in a REWEC3 caisson breakwater for Civitavecchia harbour. Below: partly constructed breakwater at Civitavecchia harbour (2014).

provided that the wave energy converter is equipped with a types: the Wells turbine and the impulse turbine (other types will
rectifying system with non-return valves. Such systems were suc- be mentioned later in this section). The Wells turbine was invented
cessfully used in small devices like navigation buoys [16] (Fig. 2). in 1976 by Dr Alan Arthur Wells (1924e2005) (at that time at
However, they have been regarded as unpractical in large plants, Queen's University of Belfast, UK) [65] (Fig. 26). The most popular
where flow rates may be of the order of 102 m3 s1 and the required alternative to the Wells turbine is the self-rectifying impulse tur-
response time is typically less than one second. This was confirmed bine, patented by Ivan A. Babintsev in 1975 [66]. Its rotor is basically
by the experience with Kaimei [17]. Except for Kaimei and small identical to the rotor of a conventional single-stage steam turbine
navigation buoys, all (or almost all) OWC prototypes tested so far of axial-flow impulse type (the classical de Laval steam turbine
have been equipped with self-rectifying air turbines. patented in 1889 and developed in the 1890s and early 20th cen-
Most self-rectifying air turbines for wave energy conversion tury by the pioneers of the steam turbine). Since the turbine flow is
proposed and tested so far are axial-flow machines of two basic required to be bidirectional, there are two rows of guide vanes,
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Fig. 18. 1:4th-scale prototype of BBDB (the OE Buoy) equipped with a Wells turbine being tested in Galway Bay, Ireland, about 2008.

Fig. 19. Mighty Whale.

placed symmetrically on both sides of the rotor, instead of a single A detailed review of Wells turbines was published in 1995 by
row (as in the conventional de Laval turbine). These two rows of Raghunathan [68]. For the impulse turbine see Ref. [69]. More
guide vanes are like the mirror image of each other with respect to recently, Setoguchi and Takao [10], Curran and Folley [11], Falca ~o
a plane through the rotor disc. The presence of guide vanes and Gato [12] and Starzmann [13] published overviews on self-
downstream of the rotor of an impulse turbine may introduce se- rectifying air turbines.
vere aerodynamic losses and is a major problem (see Section 3.3). The so-called Euler turbomachinery equation relates the torque
Several versions of both types of turbines (Wells and impulse) have Tt, produced by the flow upon a turbine rotor, to the change in the
been proposed and tested, including the use of contra-rotating flux of moment of momentum across the rotor [69]. If the one-
rotors (the McCormick contra-rotating turbine [47,67] is based on dimensional approximation is adopted, we have more simply
the impulse turbine concept). _ 1 Vt1  r2 Vt2 Þ, where r is radial coordinate, Vt is tangential
Tt ¼ mðr
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A.F.O. Falca 1403

Fig. 20. 1:3rd-scale Oceanlinx Mk3 multi-chamber floating OWC device, 2010.

Fig. 21. Spar-buoy OWC. Cross section and 1:16th-scale model tested at NAREC, UK, in 2012.

(or circumferential) component of the (absolute) flow velocity V

(positive in the direction of rotor blade motion), m_ is mass flow rate,
air turbine and subscripts 1 and 2 refer to the entrance to, and exit from, the
rotor, respectively. This may be written as E ¼ U (r1Vt1  r2Vt2),
where E ¼ U Tt =m_ is energy per unit mass of fluid and U is rota-
tional speed (radians per unit time). For an axial-flow turbine rotor,
OWC with mean radius r1 ¼ r2 ¼ r, we have simply
waves
E ¼ UrðVt1  Vt2 Þ: (1)

This equation shows that the flow has to be deflected by the rotor
Fig. 22. Schematic representation of the U-Gen. blades in such a way that Vt1 > Vt2. In conventional single-stage
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Because of construction reasons, open turbomachines, like

horizontal-axis wind turbines and marine-current turbines, are not
provided with guide vanes. On the other hand, the blade tip speed
is much larger than DVt (or than the axial velocity component), and
the exit kinetic energy Vt22 =2 is a small fraction of the work E. In the

Wells turbine under normal working conditions, the rotor blade

speed is also much larger than the flow velocity. For this reason,
2 =2 is a relatively small fraction of the work E, and the absence of
Vt2
stator blades does not dramatically impair the turbine efficiency.
The cascade model is a convenient two-dimensional approxi-
mation to an axial-flow turbomachine: the blades are intersected
by a circular cylindrical surface that is developed onto a plane. The
three-dimension flow is replaced by a two-dimensional plane flow
about a rectilinear periodic row, or cascade, of aerofoil profiles (see
e.g. Ref. [69]). Equation (1) is replaced by

E ¼ UrVx ðcot a2  cot a1 Þ; (2)

where Vx is the axial component of the flow velocity (assumed to

take equal values upstream and downstream of the cascade) and
cotai ¼ Vx/Vti (i ¼ 1, 2). The cascade approximation will be used in
Sections 3.2 and 3.3 in the introductory study of the flow through
Wells and axial-flow impulse turbines.

3.2. Wells turbines

We consider now the special case of the Wells turbine (without

and with guide vanes), and the corresponding cascades and ve-
locity diagrams (Fig. 27). The absolute flow velocity, relative flow
velocity and rotor blade velocity are denoted by vectors V, W and U,
respectively (with U ¼ Ur). The rotor blade profile is symmetrical
and the blades are set at a stagger angle of 90 (i.e. they are sym-
metrical with respect to a plane perpendicular to the rotor axis).
Early theoretical investigations on the Wells turbine aerodynamics,
based on the two-dimensional cascade flow model, are reported in
Refs. [70e72] (Fig. 27).
We consider the two-dimensional cascade flow approximation,
and denote by c the rotor blade chord and by t ¼ 2p r/Z (Z ¼ number
of blades) the rotor blade pitch. Before dealing with real fluid flow,
we derive some remarkable aerodynamic properties of the Wells
turbine from well-known analytical results for a cascade of flat
plates in incompressible irrotational flow [73e75] (see also [12]).
For that, as an approximation, we assume incompressible irrota-
tional flow and neglect the blade thickness. We find (see Ref. [76])

pc
cot a2 ¼ cot a1 þ 2 tan : (3)
Fig. 23. Schematic representation of devices with compressible air volumes and water 2t
columns [57]. Above: sea-bottom standing version; below: floating version.
From Eq. (2), we directly obtain, for the rotor work per unit mass
of air,
turbine pc
E ¼ 2UrVx tan : (4)
2t
Equation (3) shows that the exit flow angle a2 depends only on
a1 and on the rotor chord-to-pitch ratio c/t, not on the flow rate or
Fig. 24. Schematic representation of multi-OWC Seabreath. on the rotational speed. This is the basis of the design of guide
vanes for a Wells turbine. If the two rows of guide vanes are to be
the mirror image of each other, it should be a2 ¼ p  a1. Then
axial-flow turbines like steam and gas turbines, the flow is
p
c
deflected in a row of stationary blades upstream of the rotor in such a1 ¼ 1þ (5)
a way that Vt1 > 0 and, under design conditions, Vt2 y 0. In this way, 2 t
the swirl kinetic energy per unit mass Vt22 =2, that is lost at the rotor
is the angle at which the flow should leave the first row of guide
exit, it minimized. This is especially important if, on the right-hand- vanes [80]. It is important to relate the pressure drop Dp to the flow
side of Eq. (1), the blade velocity U r is not much larger than rate. We define a dimensionless pressure coefficient
DVt ¼ Vt1  Vt2, as is the case of impulse turbines. j ¼ Dp(r U2r2)1 (r ¼ air density) and a dimensionless flow rate
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Fig. 25. Schematic representation of multi-OWC LEANCON.

pc
j1 þ j2 ¼ 4f tan : (8)
2t

and E ¼ E1þE2, with E1 ¼ E2 given by the right-hand-side of Eq. (4).

The work per unit mass E done by a rotor with a single row of
blades increases with the chord-to-pitch ratio c/t, as shown by Eq.
(4). Obviously this ratio cannot be too close to unity. The contra-
rotating rotor configuration provides a way of doubling the work
E. A major disadvantage is the increased complexity due to two
turbine-generator rotating sets and the duplication of the power
electronics. An alternative way is to have two axially-offset rows of
rotor blades mounted on a single rotor (biplane rotor). As the
original monoplane Wells turbine, the biplane Wells turbine orig-
inated also at the Queen's University of Belfast [77] where it was
Fig. 26. Dr Alan Arthur Wells, inventor of the Wells turbine (1924e2005). object of investigations whose results are reported in detail in
Raghunathan's review paper [68]. The biplane rotor can be com-
plemented or not by guide vanes on both sides of the rotating blade
coefficient f ¼ VxU1r1. Assuming as before perfect-fluid flow, it set (see Ref. [12]). Biplane Wells turbines without guide vanes were
can be found for a Wells turbine cascade with guide vanes [12,76] used in the cliff-integrated Islay OWC plant commissioned in 1995
[20] and, more recently, in the Mutriku OWC breakwater [31]. A
pc
j ¼ 2f tan : (6) different configuration, proposed in Ref. [78], consists in placing the
2t
guide vanes between the two rotor blade rows. If properly designed
In the case of a Wells turbine without guide vanes, Eq. (6) is (see Ref. [12]), this arrangement can provide a way of avoiding or
replaced by (see Ref. [12]) minimizing swirl kinetic energy losses at turbine exit. It can also be

extended to more than two rotor blade planes, in what could be
pc pc
j ¼ 2f 1 þ f tan tan : (7) considered as a multi-stage turbine. Multistage Wells turbines were
2t 2t investigated as an alternative to impulse turbines in OWCs char-
Equation (6), applicable to a Wells turbine with guide vanes, is a acterized by relatively large air pressure oscillations [79].
linear relationship between pressure and flow rate. The slope of the In linear (small amplitude) water wave theory, the wave crests
straight line increases with the rotor blade-chord-to-pitch ratio c/t. and troughs are of similar amplitude and so the predicted air flow
In the case of a Wells turbine without guide vanes (see Eq. (7)), the velocities through the turbine are of identical magnitudes in both
linear relationship is an approximation, since in general directions. However, this is not true for real sea waves, especially in
f tanðp c=2tÞ is much smaller than unity. This linear relationship is more energetic sea states. The wave crests tend to be higher and
approximately confirmed by results from model testing. Indeed, shorter as compared with the wave troughs. Consequently the flow
unlike other self-rectifying turbines, the Wells turbine is commonly conditions through the air turbine may be significantly different,
regarded as a linear turbine. with peak velocities for outward flow in general larger than for
Apart from two rows of guide vanes one on each side of the inward flow. In order to equalize the peak values of the angle of
rotor, there are other ways of avoiding exit losses due to swirling incidence at the inlet to rotor blades in inward and outward flows
flow, while keeping the turbine insensitive to reversing flow di- (and avoid stalling losses due to excessive incidence), a stagger
rection. One of them is the contra-rotating turbine without guide angle (slightly) different from 90 may be adopted, as proposed in
vanes: there are two rows of rotor blades (with identical profile and Refs. [80,81].
blade pitch) that rotate in opposite directions with equal speed, as Turbines whose rotor blade setting angle (stagger angle) is
shown in Fig. 28. For the whole turbine it is adjustable and controllable have been proposed and built. A
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Fig. 27. Wells turbine, two-dimensional cascade representation and velocity diagrams: (a) without guide vanes; (b) with guide vanes.

Fig. 28. Two-dimensional cascade representation of the Wells turbine with two contra-rotating rotors.

400 kW variable-pitch Wells turbine, whose sophisticated control the axial-flow self-rectifying impulse turbine (Fig. 30). In the im-
mechanism was driven by eddy currents was designed and con- pulse turbine (unlike in the Wells turbine), neighbouring rotor
structed [82], Fig. 29. This will be mentioned again in Section 5.1 in blades form channels or ducts. The exit flow angle (in a reference
connection with reactive control. frame fixed to the blade row) is approximately equal to the exit
angle of the (moving or fixed) blades (the angular difference cor-
3.3. Axial-flow self-rectifying impulse turbine responding to the effect of slip).
The geometry of the rotor blades is a modified version of the
The most frequently proposed alternative to the Wells turbine is classical steam turbine of impulse type (see e.g. Ref. [69]): the
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symmetry now imposes two sharp edges and equal inlet and outlet
blade angles. As for the Wells turbine, we replace the three-
dimensional annular row of rotor blades by the corresponding
two-dimensional cascade of blades (Fig. 30) and assume the flow to
be incompressible and irrotational. We denote by a and b the angles
of the absolute and relative flow velocities. Those angles (at inlet
and outlet) are related to each other by cota1 ¼ f1 þ cotb1,
cota2 ¼ f1 þ cotb2, where, as before, f ¼ Vx/U is a dimensionless
flow coefficient and Vx is the axial velocity component. We note
that a1 > b1 and a2 > b2. Fig. 30 shows that, under design conditions,
the flow leaves the rotor at an angle a2 significantly larger than
p  a1, where a1 is the exit flow angle from the inlet guide-vane
row. We note that symmetry considerations require a second
guide-vane row to exist, which is the mirror image of the first one.
The “ideal” inlet flow angle into this guide-vane system (i.e. for
stall-free conditions) is equal to p  a1. However, for “design” flow
conditions, this cannot occur. An incompatibility situation arises
from this: one cannot have simultaneously the right flow incidence
(i.e. stall-free conditions) at the rotor blades and at the second
guide-vane row, a problem that has been known since the begin-
ning to designers of impulse turbines for wave energy applications.
McCormick [47,83] proposed a contra-rotating self-rectifying
impulse turbine, a prototype of which was built and tested in
Kaimei in the mid-1980s. Results from testing can be found in Ref.
[83]. The excessive incidence problem persists in the contra-
rotating turbine, in the relative flow at the inlet to the second
rotor, and (as in the single-rotor turbine) also in the flow at the inlet
to the second row of guide vanes.
To solve the excessive incidence problem, guide vanes of vari-
able geometry have been proposed by Kim et al. [84] (see also a
review in Ref. [9]). In order to avoid the difficulties of active
geometry-control, the vanes (or a segment of them) may pivot Fig. 29. 400 kW variable-pitch Wells turbine built for installation at the Pico plant. The
under the action of the aerodynamic moments acting on them, and control mechanism is driven by eddy currents.
occupy one of two pre-set angular positions, depending on whether
the air is flowing inwards or outwards (Fig. 31). This allows the
downstream guide-vane geometry to better match the angle a2 of and rotor diameter of the Wells turbine and of the impulse turbine.
the flow leaving the rotor. Although this conception increases the We start by considering the dimensionless turbine loading coefficient,
mechanical complexity and introduces additional reliability and defined as E*¼E(Ur)2. For the Wells turbine (subscript W) with a
maintenance problems, it has been found to improve the aero- single-plane rotor, with or without guide vanes, it is (see Eq. (4))
dynamic performance of the turbine.
In any case, since the flow coefficient f is strongly time-varying, * Vx
EW ¼2 tanðpc=2tÞ: (9)
oscillating irregularly between negative and positive values, it is Ur
impossible to avoid aerodynamic stalling at the rotor blades and/or at We note that, in the absence of guide vanes, it is
the downstream guide vanes during a relatively large part of the time. f ¼ Vx(Ur)1 ¼ tanb1. In real-fluid flow, it is known that aero-
dynamic stalling (boundary layer separation) will occur (with se-
3.4. Wells turbine versus axial-flow impulse turbine vere aerodynamic losses) if the angle of incidence b1 at rotor inlet
exceeds a critical value b1cr that depends on blade profile, chord-to-
The operating flow range of a Wells turbine is known to be pitch ratio c/t, upstream flow conditions and Reynolds number.
relatively narrow: for increasing flow rate, the efficiency drops Taking b1 ¼ b1cr, and assuming as typical b1cr ¼ 11 and c/t ¼ 0.5, we
sharply when stalling at rotor blades occurs [10e12,68]. For the find, for the loading coefficient, EW * y0:39. For the impulse turbine

best designs, peak efficiency under laboratory conditions was found (subscript “imp”), from similar considerations [12], it can be found
to reach about 75% [13]. that Eimp * y2:0. We conclude that, for fixed work E per unit mass,

The main problem with the impulse turbine lies in the large the
p blade speed U r of the Wells turbine is typically about
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
aerodynamic losses due to excessive incidence flow angle at the 2:0=0:39 ¼ 2:3 times larger as compared with the impulse
entry to the second row of guide vanes (this is a result of the turbine.
required symmetry of the guide vane rows with respect to each The two-dimensional flow approximation was used in Ref. [12]
other). Although the operational flow range of the impulse turbine to compare the Wells turbine (subscript W) and the axial-flow
is wider compared with the Wells turbine, its peak efficiency hardly impulse turbine (subscript imp), it being assumed that the work E
exceeds about 50%. To reduce these losses, guide vanes of variable per unit mass, the turbine flow rate and the inner/outer diameter
geometry have been proposed (see Section 3.3). This was found to ratio Di/D are equal for both turbines. The results are given in
increase the peak aerodynamic performance of the turbine up to Table 1, in terms of ratios, for Vx2 (twice the exit kinetic energy per
about 60%. A comparison of the efficiency-versus-flow-rate curves unit mass), the rotor outer diameter D and the rotational speed U.
of the two types of turbines is shown in Fig. 32. Table 1 shows that the rotor blade speed is much larger in a Wells
The two-dimensional representation may be used to make com- turbine, which also has a larger diameter and larger rotational
parisons between rotational speed, basic aerodynamic performance speed. This indicates that aerodynamic noise problems are
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Fig. 30. Self-rectifying impulse turbine: rotor with twin guide vane system. Below: two-dimensional cascade representation.

expected to be much more serious in the Wells turbine (see Section the published literature that show the Wells turbine with sub-
3.8), which, on the other hand, has a much larger capacity for en- stantially lower peak efficiency than the impulse turbine are based
ergy storage by flywheel effect (this is important to smooth out the on testing of models of 0.3 m outer rotor diameter or less at rela-
power oscillations in the electrical equipment). tively small Reynolds number.
The loss related to swirl kinetic energy at the exit from the last
row of blades can be avoided (or reduced) by the use of guide vanes 3.5. Other axial-flow air turbines for bidirectional flows
or (in the case of the Wells turbine) of contra-rotating rotors. The
loss of the kinetic energy (per unit mass) associated to the axial An alternative method of reducing the aerodynamic losses by
flow velocity, Vx2 =2, cannot be avoided except if some kind of, excessive incidence angle at the entrance to the second row of
possibly axisymmetric, divergent duct is used as a diffuser. This loss guide vanes of an impulse turbine consists in increasing the dis-
is much greater in the impulse turbine than the Wells turbine, as tance between the guide vane rows and the rotor blades, with the
shown in the first column of Table 1. This explains why the use of an object of reducing the velocity (and hence the kinetic energy) of the
axisymmetric diffuser is much more important in an impulse tur- flow at the entrance to the second row of guide vanes and in this
bine than in a Wells turbine. way reduce the energy losses due to boundary layer separation
The two-dimensional flow analysis indicates that the efficiency (stalling) at those vanes. This methodology was proposed in Refs.
of the Wells turbine can be much more sensitive to changes in [85,86]: the two rows of guide vanes, one on each side of the rotor,
Reynolds number than the efficiency of the impulse turbine [12]. are offset from the rotor blades, radially as well as axially, with
The Wells turbine is known to perform poorly in small model annular ducts connecting the guide vane sets with the rotor blade
testing (and small flow velocities), more so than the impulse tur- row. The radial offset allows, by conservation of angular mo-
bine, mostly due to Reynolds number effects. A fair comparison mentum, the circumferential component of the flow velocity to be
between the two turbines should be based on results from testing reduced at the entrance to the second row of guide vanes. This
at sufficiently large Reynolds number. Some of the comparisons in radial offset, eventually combined with an increase in the gap
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that shares some characteristics with the variable-pitch Wells

turbine, the main difference being that the setting angle g of the
Denniss-Auld rotor blades (Fig. 34) may be controlled to vary
within a range a < g < p  a (where ay20  35 ), whereas in the
variable-pitch Wells turbine it is q < g < q (with qy25 ). While in
the Wells turbine the rotor blade rounded leading edge faces the
incoming flow all the time, in the Denniss-Auld turbine both edges
of a blade must be identical since (like in the impulse turbine rotor)
each edge behaves alternately as a leading edge or as a trailing edge
depending on the direction of the reciprocating flow through the
turbine. It is to be noted that, whenever the flow changes direction
(exhaust or intake), the blades of the Denniss-Auld turbine are
required to pivot almost instantaneously between their extreme
positions, whereas in the Wells turbine the blades are required to
pivot smoothly within a relatively small angular range. Results from
model testing gave a peak efficiency of 0.65 [88]. A Dennis-Auld
turbine prototype was tested in Oceanlinx Mk3 side-by-side with
the HydroAir turbine (Fig. 20).

3.6. Radial-flow self-rectifying air turbines

Apart from the more common axial-flow configuration, studies

have also been made on radial-flow self-rectifying impulse turbines
(Fig. 35). It should be noted that the turbine is no longer insensitive
to the flow direction: the flow through the rotor blades and guide
vanes is radially centrifugal or centripetal depending on the wave
cycle. The turbine is connected to the OWC chamber by an axial
duct, whereas the exit to, or admission from, the atmosphere is
radial. The radial turbine was investigated by model testing
[89e91] and by numerical simulation [92e95]. Takao et al. [96]
Fig. 31. Two-dimensional representation of impulse turbine with self-pitching guide investigated the effect of pitch-controlled (inner and outer) guide
vanes (of mono-vane type) in the two angular positions. vanes, and found an increase up to about 15% in the efficiency in
comparison with fixed guide vanes. With the available (experi-
mental and numerical) information, the radial configuration of the
impulse turbine appears as an alternative to the axial one, although
not necessarily a better choice.
A radial-flow version of the classical axial-flow Wells turbine
was proposed by John Kentfield in 1983 [97], and was recently
studied by numerical simulation and experimentally [98,99]
(Fig. 36). The results from model testing revealed that, as for the
more conventional axial-flow Wells turbine, the pressure head is
approximately a linear function of the flow rate, and a sharp drop
in efficiency occurs if the flow rate exceeds a critical value; this
value is about 30% higher for outward flow. A peak efficiency of
0.65 was measured for outward flow, compared with 0.60 for
inward flow.
A different type of self-rectifying radial-flow turbine, that was
patented [100] and model tested [101], has a pair of guide-vane
rows mounted on the periphery of the radial-flow rotor. The
guide-vane row pair slides axially, by gravity and aerodynamic
action, so as to convert the bidirectional flow admitted to the tur-
Fig. 32. Efficiency versus flow coefficient ratio F=Fh for a monoplane Wells turbine
with guide vanes and an impulse turbine with fixed guide vanes. Fh denotes peak
bine into unidirectional flow through the rotor, as shown in Fig. 37.
efficiency conditions. From Ref. [12]. Experimental results are reported in Ref. [101] for different guide-
vane setting angles. The maximum measured peak efficiency was
about 57%. The turbine performance seems to be penalized by the
between the inner and outer walls of the annular ducts (i.e. an
increase in blade span of the stator system), produces also a
Table 1
decrease in the meridian component (projected onto an axial Comparison between typical Wells (W) and impulse (imp) turbines.
plane) of the flow velocity. One such turbine, commercially named Ratios are shown for axial flow velocity Vx ; outer rotor diameter D and
HydroAir (Fig. 33), equipped the 1:3rd-scale floating OWC proto- rotational speed U: The work per unit mass E, the flow rate and the
type Oceanlinx Mk3 briefly tested off Port Kembla, Australia, in inner-to-outer diameter ratio Di =D are the same for both turbines.

2010 (see Fig. 20). 2

VxW DW UW
Vx2 imp Dimp Uimp
The so-called Denniss-Auld turbine, developed in Australia to
0.27 1.4 1.7
equip OWC plants [87,88], is a self-rectifying axial-flow turbine,
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lack of an efficient diffusor system for the recovery of kinetic energy

at rotor exit.
The so-called biradial turbine [102e104] is an impulse turbine
that is symmetrical with respect to a plane perpendicular to its axis
of rotation (Fig. 38). The flow into, and out of, the rotor is radial. The
rotor is surrounded by a pair of radial-flow guide-vane rows, each
row being connected to the corresponding rotor inlet/outlet by a
duct whose walls are flat discs. In version 1, as a way of reducing the
losses due to excessive incidence at the entry to the second row of
guide vanes, the guide vanes are radially offset from the rotor
(Fig. 38b). This allows the exit flow from the rotor to be decelerated
in the connecting duct (both the circumferential and radial velocity
components are decreased) which results in smaller aerodynamic
stall losses at the guide vanes. Alternately, in version 2, the guide
vane rows may be removed from, or inserted into, the flow space by
axially displacing the whole guide vane set, so that the downstream
guide vanes are prevented from obstructing the flow coming out of
the rotor. In this case, the radial distance between the rotor and the
guide vanes is small, as shown in Fig. 38a. The biradial turbine was
studied by numerical simulation [103] and model testing [104]. The
measured peak efficiency of version 2 was about 79%, possibly the
highest efficiency of a self-rectifying air turbine measured so far.
Single stage conventional turbines, like steam and gas turbines,
with a row of guide vanes followed by a bladed rotor, are known to
attain high efficiencies in unidirectional flow. In such turbines, if
the sign of the pressure head is changed (and the rotational speed is
kept unaltered), the flow rate (apart from changing sign) becomes
much smaller (and the turbine performance becomes very poor).
This has led to the idea of associating two identical “conventional”
air turbines (turbines T1 and T2) in parallel to convert the

Fig. 34. Denniss-Auld turbine. Below: velocity diagram and blade setting angle g.

pneumatic energy from an OWC, such that, for a given pressure

head situation, the flow sequence guide-vanes-rotor-blades in
turbine T1 is reversed with respect to turbine T2 (see Refs.
[105e107]). This topology is shown in Fig. 39. With this arrange-
ment, for a given pressure head (independently of its sign), most of
the flow is admitted to one of the turbines (that is driven with good
efficiency) while a smaller fraction of the flow is admitted to the
other turbine (that is in choking mode and operates at very low
efficiency). The two turbines can be coupled to a common electrical
generator (as in Fig. 39) or, alternately, each turbine is coupled to its
own generator. Since the turbines are not symmetrical, their rotor
blades, as in Fig. 39, need no longer to be symmetrical with respect
to the mid-chord point. Some positive degree of reaction may be
convenient. Model testing of a unidirectionaleturbine pair in a rig
capable of bi-directional oscillating air flow is reported in Ref. [106].
The turbine rotor diameter was 165 mm and each turbine was
coupled to its own generator. A peak efficiency of 0.6 was
measured. The aerodynamic performance of the twin unidirec-
tional turbine configuration was numerically simulated in detail in
Ref. [108]. It was found that the flow rate through the turbine in
reverse mode is about one-third of the total flow and produces a
negative torque which reduces the system efficiency if the two
turbines are directly connected to the same rotation axis.

3.7. Some air turbine prototypes

Several full-sized OWC prototypes have been deployed into the

Fig. 33. HydroAir turbine. sea; in some cases large models at scales about 1:3rd to 1:4th have
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Fig. 35. Schematic representation of the radial self-rectifying impulse turbine.

rotor
blades
guide
vanes

Fig. 36. Radial-flow version of the Wells turbine.

Fig. 37. Self-rectifying radial-flow turbine with unidirectional-flow rotor and twin
axially sliding guide-vane rows. Guide vane position: (a) for downward flow; (b) for
upward flow.
been tested in sheltered waters. The first large prototype was Kai-
mei, already mentioned in Section 2.1, in whose thirteen open-
bottom chambers different types of turbines were tested
biplane type without guide vanes, rated 18.5 kW [31,113]. The
(including unidirectional, Wells and self-rectifying impulse tur-
Denniss-Auld turbine equipped the several OWC prototypes Mk1
bines). Since then, most prototypes were equipped with Wells
(bottom standing) to Mk3 (floating), developed in Australia. The
turbines, some of which are listed in Table 2, together with their
prototype Mk 3 (1:3rd scale), briefly tested in 2010, also incorpo-
main characteristics. Remarkable for their size are the pair of
rated a HydroAir impulse turbine (Figs. 20 and 33). The 1:4th-scale
2
500 kW contra-rotating Wells turbines that equipped the
BBDB OWC (the OE Buoy) tested in Galway Bay, Ireland, between
bottom-standing OSPREY prototype (Fig. 40). They never operated:
2008 and 2011 (Fig. 18) was equipped first with a Wells turbine and
the plant structure was damaged during deployment in Scotland in
later with an axial-flow self-rectifying impulse turbine with actu-
1995 and later destroyed by wave action.
ated variable-pitch guide vanes [41,42], Fig. 41. The recently
The Indian bottom-standing OWC plant, commissioned in 1991,
completed bottom-standing OWC, located at Juju Island, South
was operated with several axial-flow self-rectifying air turbines of
Korea (Fig. 14), is equipped with two 250 kW axial-flow impulse
Wells and impulse type [24]. The Mutriku plant recently completed
turbines of 1.8 m diameter, with 26 rotor blades and fixed guide
in northern Spain (Fig. 15) comprises 16 OWC chambers, each
vanes (Fig. 42).
equipped with a 0.75 m-diameter vertical axis Wells turbine of
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Fig. 38. Biradial turbine: (a) version 2, with axially-sliding guide vanes; (b) version 1, with radially-offset fixed guide vanes; (c) perspective view of version 2. GV ¼ guide vanes,
RB ¼ rotor blades.

3.8. Turbine noise

All turbines operating with air or other gas produce noise. This
can be a nuisance if the machine is located near an inhabited area
and is not properly shielded, as is the case of many wind turbines.
Noise can also be a problem with air turbines for wave energy
conversion, especially in shoreline or nearshore applications.
Produced noise level increases with machine size and especially
with flow velocity and rotor blade speed. This means that it may
affect particularly Wells turbines, especially under stalled flow
conditions. A noise attenuation chamber had to be retrofitted onto
the end of the Wells turbine ducting of the LIMPET shoreline plant
(Islay island, Scotland) to reduce the transmitted noise. This turned
out to cause mal-distribution of flow during the intake stroke of the Fig. 39. Twin unidirectional impulse turbine topology.

turbine; the increased air flow at the bottom of the turbine ducting
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caused a further increase in stall with an associated reduction in following relationship for the flow through the turbine (see Ref.
turbine performance [114,115]. [118])
Takao et al. [116] performed a model testing investigation on
several self-rectifying air turbines and concluded that impulse F ¼ FF ðJÞ; h ¼ Fh ðJÞ; P ¼ FP ðJÞ; (10)
turbines are superior to Wells turbines on what concerns noise
characteristics. An extensive experimental investigation on acous- where
tic characteristics of Wells turbines was carried out at Siegen Uni-
p w Pt
versity, in Germany [13,117]. It was found that, for fixed rotational J¼ ; F¼ ; P¼ : (11)
speed, the sound power radiated by a Wells turbine increases more rat U2 D2 rat UD3 rat U3 D5
or less steadily with rising pressure head up to an operating point
Here, w is mass flow rate through the turbine (positive for outward
where the maximum power point is reached. Beyond this point, the
flow), rat is atmospheric air density, U is the rotational speed (in
turbine stalls and a dramatic increase in sound power is observed. A
radians per unit time), D is the turbine rotor diameter and Pt is the
stalled Wells turbine emits noise that far exceeds all noise levels
turbine power output. In Eqs. (10) and (11), J is dimensionless
found in a healthy flow regime.
pressure head, h is aerodynamic efficiency, F is dimensionless flow
rate and P is dimensionless aerodynamic torque or dimensionless
3.9. Dimensional analysis
turbine power output. Functions FF , Fh and FP are the same for
model and prototype, since these are assumed geometrically similar.
Dimensional analysis is widely used in turbomachinery studies
(see e.g. Ref. [69]). Its application to air turbines for OWCs is
especially useful in two situations: (i) when transposing results 3.10. Turbine performance in random waves
from turbine model testing to full-sized prototype; (ii) to study the
effects of changes in rotational speed upon the aerodynamic per- Self-rectifying air turbines in OWCs are subject to oscillations in
formance curves of a given turbine. pressure head and flow rate that, in relative terms, far exceed what
In OWC converters operating under energetic sea conditions, is typical of more conventional turbine applications. The flow rate
the pressure oscillations in the air chamber may be large enough for randomly oscillates between negative and positive values with a
changes in air density to be non-negligible. This means that Mach typical period of 6e12 s. What matters in terms of aerodynamic
number effects in the turbine flow may be significant. We consider: performance is an average efficiency rather than peak efficiency.
(i) the same turbine under different working conditions, or (ii) a For a given sea state, the probability density function fz(z) of the
full-sized turbine and its geometrically similar model. Dimensional surface elevation z at a given observation point may be considered
analysis requires that three dimensionless quantities take equal Gaussian, an assumption widely adopted in ocean engineering
values for the similarity relationships to apply: Reynolds number, applications. The pressure oscillations p(t) in the air chamber are
Mach number and inlet-to-outlet pressure ratio [69]. Not much also random, and may be considered as a Gaussian process within
accurate information is available from the monitoring of full-sized the framework of linear water wave theory (see Section 4) provided
prototype air turbines under real sea conditions. Indeed, most in- that the turbine exhibits a linear pressure-versus-flow-rate char-
formation comes from model testing under laboratory conditions, acteristic. This is approximately the case of Wells turbines. In such
in most cases with turbine rotor diameters between 0.3 and 0.6 m. cases, the probability density function fp(p) of the air pressure os-
Pressure heads achievable in the tests rigs so far used to test self- cillations may be written as
rectifying air turbines are substantially lower than what can be !
attained in OWC converters under energetic sea conditions. 1 p2
fp ðpÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi exp  2 ; (12)
Consequently, the Mach number equality is usually ignored as a 2psp 2sp
condition for full aerodynamic similarity. At full size, changes in
Reynolds number practically do not affect the aerodynamic per- where s2p is the variance, and sp is the standard deviation (or root-
formance of air turbines [118] The same is not true if the similarity mean-square) of the pressure oscillation p (see Refs. [12,119]). In
is to be established between a relatively small model and a large dimensionless form (see Section 3.9), the time-averaged value P of
full-sized machine. In any case, Reynolds number effects are the turbine power output P is
ignored or, alternately, accounted for by more or less well estab-
lished formulae from turbomachinery literature [118]. In what fol- Z∞ !
1 J2
lows, we ignore Mach and Reynolds number effects and assume the PðsJ Þ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi exp  2 FP ðJÞdJ; (13)
air flow through the turbine to be approximately incompressible. 2psJ 2sJ
∞
Let p þ pat (pat ¼ atmospheric pressure) be the instantaneous air
pressure in the chamber. Buckingham's theorem yields the where

Table 2
Characteristics of Wells turbines of some OWC prototypes. Type: MP ¼ monoplane; BP ¼ biplane; CR ¼ contra-rotating; GV ¼ with guide vanes; VP ¼ variable-pitch; h ¼ hub-
to-tip ratio; Z ¼ rotor blade number; c ¼ rotor blade chord; s ¼ solidity (total bladed area divided by annular area).

Plant Year Type D (m) h Z c (m) s Pt ðkWÞ

Sakata, Japan [109] 1989 MP, GV 1.337 0.75 16 0.1625 0.71 30

Vizhijam,
India [110] 1991 MP 2.0 0.6 8 0.380 0.611 150
Islay, UK [111] 1991 BP 1.2 0.62 4þ4 0.4 0.54 75
OSPREY, UK 1995 CR 3.5 2
500
Mighty Whale, Japan [43] 1998 MP, GV 1.7 0.706 8 30
Pico, Portugal [25] 1999 MP, GV 2.3 0.598 8 0.375 0.53 400
LIMPET, UK [26] 2000 CR 2.6 0.62 7þ7 0.329 2
0.34 2
250
Pico, Portugal [82,112] 2001 VP 1.7 0.71 15 0.2 0.66 400
Mutriku, Spain [113] 2011 BP 0.75 3þ3 18
1414 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca

code-named GV6. Its performance curves are plotted in the upper

part of Fig. 43, as representative of a highly efficient Wells turbine.
The corresponding curves for the biradial turbine were obtained
from testing a model [104] and are plotted in the lower part of
Fig. 43. Curves of dimensionless averaged power output P versus
sJ for the same two turbines can be found in Ref. [79]. The
instantaneous peak efficiency is 75% for the Wells turbine and 79%
for the biradial turbine. The corresponding maximum values of the
average efficiency h are 67% and 72%, and occur at sJ y0:022 and
0.34. Note that the decay of the hðsJ Þ curve to the right of its
highest point is much more marked for the Wells turbine, which is
explained by the sharp drop in efficiency h at a critical value
Jy0:072. In irregular waves, this critical value of J is attained the
more frequently the higher the value of sJ . Assuming the size and
rotational speed of the two turbines being such that the maximum
values of h occur for identical values of the standard deviation sp of
the pressure p, we find, from Eq. (14), for the ratio ffi of the rotor blade
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
tip speeds, ðUDÞWells =ðUDÞbirad ¼ 0:33=0:022y3:9. This confirms
that, for the same applications, the rotor blade tip speed of the
Wells turbine is typically much higher than for impulse turbines
(and in general other types of air turbines for OWCs).
It is interesting to compare the results plotted in Fig. 43 for the
Fig. 40. 2
500 kW contra-rotating Wells turbine of OSPREY, about 1995. average efficiency h of air turbines, with typical efficiencies of high-
pressure-oil hydraulic PTOs used in oscillating-body WECs. Such
information, based on performance of real hydraulic and electrical
components and on numerical simulations of the whole WEC, are
available in Ref. [120] for a heaving buoy off the coast of Oregon,
USA. The PTO efficiency was found to vary widely with sea state,
with an annual average of 61% and a maximum value of 72%. It
should be noted that the efficiency of hydraulic PTOs substantially
vary with the load (and sea state), whereas the aerodynamic effi-
ciency of air turbines (known to be almost independent of Reynolds
number) only depends weakly on such factors provided that the
rotational speed is appropriately controlled and no constraints on
maximum allowed rotational speed are imposed.

3.11. Turbine induced damping

As explained in more detail in Section 4, the hydrodynamic

process of energy absorption from the waves by an OWC converter
depends on the relationship between the volume flow rate dis-
placed by the OWC motion and the air pressure in the chamber, i.e.
the damping provided by the turbine. This is directly related to the
volume air flow rate w/r through the turbine (positive for outward
Fig. 41. Axial-flow impulse turbine with controlled-pitch guide vanes, tested in the flow) and the pressure head p available to the turbine (here we
1:4th-scale BBDB OWC (the OE Buoy) at Galway Bay, Ireland, in 2011.
assume incompressible air flow with density r).
The relationship w/r ¼ f(p) depends on the turbine type, ge-
sp ometry, size and rotational speed. It should match the hydrody-
sJ ¼ (14) namics requirements, which, for a given OWC device, depend on
rat U2 D2
the sea state, especially on the representative wave frequency. For a
is a dimensionless form of sp, or, equivalently, is the standard de- given turbine geometry (independently of turbine size, rotational
viation or root-mean-square of the dimensionless pressure head J. speed and air density), the dimensional analysis allows us to write
An averaged efficiency h versus sJ in randomly oscillating air F ¼ FJ(J), where FJ is a functional relationship that characterizes
the turbine geometry, F is the dimensionless flow rate and J the
pressure head can be obtained from Eq. (13) (for details, see Refs.
[12,119]). These relations, derived for a linear turbine (as is the case dimensionless pressure head as defined by Eq. (11).
The Wells turbines are known to be approximately linear tur-
of the Wells turbine), can be applied approximately for non-linear
self-rectifying turbines (like impulse turbines). bines, i.e. it is J ¼ KF, where K is a factor that depends, among
other parameters, on the hub-to-tip diameter ratio and on blade
Curves are plotted in Fig. 43 for the instantaneous efficiency h
versus dimensionless pressure head J (solid lines) and for the solidity (total bladed area divided by annular area). It follows that
average efficiency h versus the standard deviation or root-mean- w D
square sJ (dotted lines). An extensive experimental research pro- ¼ : (15)
p KU
gram on the aerodynamics of the Wells turbine, involving a large
number of geometries, was recently carried out at Universit€ at Sie- The hydrodynamics of an OWC converter in a given represen-
gen, Germany [13,117]. One of the most efficient tested models is tative sea state yields a design value (w/p)des for the ratio w/p. If,
 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca 1415

Fig. 42. One of the two 250 kW impulse turbines of the bottom-standing OWC plant at Jeju Island, South Korea.

values were optimized for a representative or “design” sea state.

The turbine rotational speed should be increased in more energetic
states, and decreased in less energetic sea states, it the turbine ef-
ficiency is not to be negatively affected. From Eq. (15) we conclude
that this changes would imply decreasing, or increasing, the
damping ratio w/p, which in turn would affect the efficiency of the
hydrodynamic process of wave energy absorption.
The linearity of the Wells turbine makes it different from other
turbines. In most other self-rectifying turbines (including those of
impulse types), and in conventional axial- and radial-flow water
and gas turbines, the pressure head versus flow rate is roughly
quadratic, or

w2 rD4
y : (16)
p K1

This shows that the damping provided by the turbine is approxi-

mately independent of the rotational speed. This speed may be
adjusted to maximize the turbine efficiency without that affecting
the hydrodynamic process.
In real irregular waves and in a wave climate consisting of a wide
range of sea states, the turbine optimization procedures are a lot
more complex than outlined above. Such procedures are described in
Ref. [121] for a fixed-structure OWC and in Ref. [79] for a floating one.

3.12. Concluding remarks

Several types of self-rectifying air turbines were developed

since the mid-1970s to equip OWC plants. The axial-flow Wells
turbine is the best known. It is also mechanically the simplest
Fig. 43. Dimensionless representation of aerodynamic efficiency h versus pressure turbine, especially the variant without guide vanes, and possibly
head J (solid curves) for the Wells turbine (a) and the biradial turbine (b). The dotted the cheapest one to construct. The performance characteristics can
curves represent the average efficiency h versus the standard deviation sJ of the
pressure in oscillating flow.
be adjusted by changing the hub-to-tip diameter ratio and the
blade solidity (total bladed area divided by annular area). This can
be extended by setting the rotor blades onto two planes (bi-plane
besides that, the turbine geometry is specified (i.e. for fixed K), we turbine). The introduction of guide vanes, as a way of recovering the
find a design value (D/U)des for the ratio D/U. A further condition is exit swirl kinetic energy, can improve the peak efficiency by a few
introduced by the dependence of the turbine efficiency on the percent. A similar effect can be achieved by contra-rotating rotors,
dimensionless pressure head h ¼ Fh(J) (assumed known). Let Jhmax but this is a substantially more expensive solution. Multi-stage
be the value of J that maximizes the efficiency h. Assuming an Wells turbines have been considered for relatively large pressure
“average” or “design” value pdes for the pressure head p, we obtain heads, but this seems never to have been tested. Results from
1=2 1=2
ðUDÞdes ¼ pdes r1=2 Jhmax . This together with the value (D/U)des, model testing of Wells turbines indicate that peak efficiencies up to
finally gives the design values Ddes and Udes. Note that these design about 75% are attainable with the best designs. The basic
1416 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca

conception of the turbine itself, together with limits in the lift-to- free-surface was assumed as a piston-like horizontal flat surface.
drag ratio of aerofoils, makes this value unlikely to be exceeded A more realistic assumption is a spatially uniform air pressure
by more than a few percent. The major limitation of the Wells on the, in general warped, interior free surface. This model was
turbine is the sharp drop in efficiency that occurs whenever the adopted for the first time in Ref. [122], where a two-dimensional
flow rate exceeds the stall-free conditions at the rotor blades. This is OWC was theoretically analysed. The uniform surface pressure
particularly damaging in irregular waves, as shown in Fig. 43a. For model was generalized in Ref. [123] to arbitrary geometries. The
identical applications and conditions, the rotor blade speed of a adoption of the rigid piston model was (and is) a way of taking
(single stage) Wells turbine is much larger than that of any other advantage of the theory developed prior to the mid-1970s of the
type of self-rectifying turbine (both the rotor diameter and the interaction between waves and floating bodies, especially ships
rotational speed are larger). While this increases the kinetic energy (see e.g. Refs. [124,125]). This theory was later extended in Ref.
storage capability by flywheel effect (which may be desirable), it [126] to oscillating-body wave energy converters (see also [127]).
may also have negative effects, namely constraints due to Mach The concepts of body velocity and force in oscillating-body theory
number effects (occurrence of shock waves) and excessive cen- are replaced by air flow rate and air pressure in the uniform free-
trifugal stresses. surface pressure approach to OWC modelling.
The main snag about the self-rectifying axial- and radial-flow Assuming linear water wave theory to apply, the governing
turbines of impulse type is the presence, under both flow direc- equation for the rigid piston model of a fixed-structure OWC
tion conditions, of a row of guide vanes downstream of the rotor. (Fig. 44a) may be written as
This was found to limit the peak efficiency to about 50%. The use of
passively or actively controlled pivoting guide vanes can improve d2 x
the peak efficiency of such turbines by about 10e15%, but this is m ¼ rgSx þ fr þ fe  Sp: (17)
dt 2
achieved at the cost of increased mechanical complexity. An alter-
native for reducing the aerodynamic losses at the downstream Here, x is a vertical coordinate defining the piston position (with x
guide vanes is to offset them radially from the rotor. A problem of increasing upwards and x ¼ 0 in the absence of incident waves), m
this configuration is associated with the increased distance the is the mass of the piston (possibly equal to zero), S is the piston area,
fluid in strongly swirling flow has to travel between the first row of r is water density, g is acceleration of gravity, fr is the hydrodynamic
guide vanes and the rotor blades: this is likely to produce signifi- radiation force on the piston due to the piston motion in otherwise
cant losses and flow profile distortion due to interaction with the calm water, fe is the excitation force on the assumedly fixed piston
duct wall boundary layers. The only way of totally avoiding this due to the incident wave field, and p is the excess pressure of air in
problem is to remove the downstream guide vanes from the flow the chamber (p ¼ 0 in the absence of waves or if the chamber is fully
coming out of the rotor; this is done in the sliding-guide-vane open to the atmosphere). We may write Sx ¼ V0  V, where V(t) is
version of the biradial turbine, which allowed a measured peak the instantaneous volume of air in the chamber and V0 is its value in
efficiency of 79% to be attained. Again, this is achieved at the cost of the absence of waves.
increased mechanical complexity. If the uniform pressure distribution on the inner free-surface is the
Controlling the rotor blade pitch of axial-flow turbines as a way adopted model (Fig. 44b), we introduce the volume flow rate q(t)
of widening the flow range response has also been attempted, but displaced by the motion of the internal free-surface (q > 0 for upward
this introduces even higher mechanical complexity. motion). It is q ¼ dV/dt. The linearization allows us to decompose
Conventional hydraulic and gas turbines of radial- and axial-
flow types are very efficient machines, with peak efficiencies in qðtÞ ¼ qr ðtÞ þ qe ðtÞ: (18)
the range of 90e93%. Their use in OWC applications would require
a valve mechanism of flow rectification. This has been considered Here qr is the radiation flow rate due to the oscillating pressure p in
for some multi-OWC floating devices with all (or some) chambers the chamber in the absence of incident waves, and qe is the exci-
connected to a single turbine through low- and high-pressure tation flow rate due to the incident wave field if p ¼ 0.
ducts. In both models, the air pressure p(t) is related to the instanta-
The power level available to the turbine varies widely with the neous volume V(t) of air in the chamber and its time history, to the
sea state. Since full-sized air turbines operate at large Reynolds aerodynamic characteristics of the turbine, and to the thermody-
numbers, such variations should not significantly affect the average namics of the air compression/decompression process that takes
efficiency of the turbine, provided that its rotational speed is place in the chamber. We assume first that a linear relationship
adequately controlled. The same cannot be said of electrical gen- applies between, on the one hand, the piston velocity dx/dt or the
erators, whose efficiency is known to drop substantially at partial displaced volume-flow rate q, and, on the other hand, the pressure
loads. oscillation p. This assumption is taken as in linear system theory
where the response to a sinusoidally time-varying signal is another
4. OWC modelling sinusoidally time-varying signal, possibly with a phase difference
between both. Under such conditions, the whole (wave-to-pneu-
4.1. Theoretical hydrodynamic modelling matic) system is linear. If in addition the incident waves are regular
of radian frequency u, we may employ a frequency domain analysis
Not surprisingly, OWCs were among the first wave energy and write
converters to be theoretically modelled. This was particularly the
case of the OWC spar-buoy which was analysed by Michael fx; fr ; fe ; q; qr ; qe ; pg ¼ fX; Fr ; Fe ; Q ; Qr ; Qe ; Pgeiut ; (19)
McCormick, one of the wave energy pioneers, in what were two of
the first theoretical papers on wave energy converters to have been where X, Fr, Fe, Q, Qr, Qe and P are, in general complex, amplitudes.
published in journal form [45,46]. These were followed, in 1978, by Here, and wherever a physical quantity is equated to a complex
a paper by Evans [6] with analytical solutions for simple geome- expression, it should be understood that the real part is to be taken.
tries: a vertical thin-walled tube-shaped OWC and a two- Note that the amplitude ratios P/(iuSX) ¼ a  ib and P/Q ¼ a  ib, (a,
dimensional one formed by two parallel vertical thin walls. These b real), involving the chamber pressure and the air flow rate dis-
early papers were based on linear water wave theory, and the inner placed by the piston motion or the inner free-surface motion, may
 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca 1417

be complex due to the air compressibility effect in the chamber. Equations (24) and (25) relate the pair of hydrodynamic co-
This introduces a phase difference between the flow rate q and the efficients (G1,H1) to the pair (A, B). We recall that the pairs of hy-
flow rate through the air turbine (see Section 4.2). drodynamic coefficients (G1,H1) and (G, H) are physically similar,
As is usual in the frequency domain analysis, we further write, for but their numerical values do not coincide because the two models
the radiation force on the piston, Fr ¼ (u2A  iuB)X. Here A (added are not expected to yield exactly equal results.
mass) and B (radiation damping coefficient) are real, and B cannot be By setting P ¼ 0 in Eq. (20), we easily find the following rela-
negative (see Refs. [123,127]). Correspondingly, we write, for the tionship between the complex excitation force amplitude Fe and the
radiation flow rate, Qr ¼ (G þ iH)P (G and H are real) where G is the complex excitation flow rate amplitude Qe,1, where, as above, the
radiation conductance and H is the radiation susceptance (see Ref. subscript 1 indicates that Qe,1 is not exactly equal to Qe,
[127]). The four radiation coefficients A, B, G and H depend on wave
h i1
frequency u. From Eq. (17), we easily obtain, for the piston model,
Qe;1 ¼ iuS  u2 ðm þ AÞ þ iuB þ rgS Fe : (26)
h i
2
X  u ðm þ AÞ þ iuB þ rgS ¼ Fe  SP (20) In general, the piston velocity dx/dt and the displaced volume-
flow rate q are not proportional to the pressure oscillation p. The
or nonlinearities may be introduced by the air chamber thermody-
h
 i namics or by the aerodynamic performance curves of the turbine.
X  u2 ðm þ AÞ þ iu B þ S2 a þ rgS þ S2 ub ¼ Fe : (21) In such cases, the frequency domain analysis is no longer applicable
and has to be replaced by a time domain analysis. In particular, the
From Eq. (18), we find, for the uniform surface pressure distri- expression of the radiation force on the piston involves a convo-
bution model, lution integral, as in the so-called Cummins equation in ship hy-
  drodynamics [128], extended to oscillating-body wave energy
1 converters in Ref. [129]. Similarly, the radiation flow rate qr can be
P þ G þ iH ¼ Qe : (22)
a  ib expressed by a convolution integral as done in Ref. [130]

These are the equations to be solved in the frequency domain. Zt

It may be of interest to relate the added mass A and the radiation qr ðtÞ ¼  hr ðt  tÞpc ðtÞdt: (27)
damping coefficient B to the radiation conductance G and the ra-
∞
diation susceptance H. To do that, we consider the piston model,
and assume no incident waves. Consequently, in Eq. (17), we set The memory function hr is related to the radiation susceptance
Fe ¼ 0 and replace X by Xr (complex amplitude of the piston G through the Fourier transform
displacement due to the time varying air pressure only). The
complex amplitude of the flow rate displaced by the piston motion Z∞
2
is iuSXr which, as for Qr, we decompose as iuSXr ¼ (G1þiH1)P, hr ðsÞ ¼ GðuÞcos us du: (28)
where subscript 1 is used to denote that the radiation conductance p
0
G1 and the radiation susceptance H1 are defined for the piston
model, and so are not expected to be exactly equal to G and H. Then The surface pressure distribution model was extended from
we are left with fixed structure to floating structure OWCs in Ref. [131]. The theo-
retical modelling of OWCs based on the free-surface uniform
ðG1 þ iH1 ÞP h i pressure model is the subject of a full chapter in Falnes' book [127].
 u2 ðm þ AÞ þ iuB þ rgS ¼ SP (23)
iuS Analytical solutions based on the surface pressure distribution
model were obtained for several simple geometries by integrating
or Laplace's equation for the velocity potential function by the method
of separation of variables together with the matched eigenfuction
S2 G 1 expansion method. This is the case of a two-dimensional OWC with
¼ B; (24)
G21 þ H12 vertical thin walls [132], a vertical thin-walled circular cylindrical
OWC [133] and a circular cylindrical OWC at the tip of a breakwater
uS2 H1 [134] or the tip of a coastal corner [135]. More complex geometries
¼ u2 ðm þ AÞ þ rgS: (25) include a floating vertical axisymmetric OWC [136] and a two-
G21 þ H12
dimensional dual-chamber OWC on stepped bottom [137]. For

(a) turbine (b) turbine

piston

Fig. 44. Schematic representation of OWC modelling: (a) piston model; (b) free-surface uniform pressure model.
1418 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca

non-diffracting OWC structures, analytical solutions can be derived and is important in a full-sized OWC converter. This effect was
from the expressions for the wave field induced by time-harmonic modelled for the first time in Ref. [149], and shortly afterwards in
surface pressure distributions [124]. This was the method adopted Ref. [150]. In both papers, and in many subsequent ones (see e.g.
in Ref. [138] for in infinite linear array of OWCs, which was Ref. [151]), a simple isentropic relationship between air pressure
extended to other array configurations in Ref. [139]. and density was assumed. In fact, the aerodynamic and thermo-
Even if linear water wave theory is assumed to apply (which dynamic processes that take place in the air chamber and turbine of
implies irrotational flow and small amplitudes for the outer and an OWC converter are quite complex; they were analysed in detail
inner free-surface motions), complex geometries require the in Ref. [152]. It seems reasonable to assume that they are approx-
application of numerical methods. These are usually based on the imately adiabatic. Indeed, the temperature oscillations in the air
computation of hydrodynamic coefficients as defined above. chamber are relatively small and their time scales (a few seconds)
Commercial codes based on the boundary element method (BEM) are too short for significant heat exchanges to occur across the
are available to compute such coefficients for ships and marine chamber walls and across the airewater interface, in comparison
structures. Such codes, like WAMIT, ANSYS/Aqwa and Aquaplus, with the energy flux in the turbine.
have also been frequently employed by the wave energy conversion However, even if the process is assumed as adiabatic, significant
community. Their use assumes an oscillating body or a set of changes in specific entropy occur in the flow through the turbine,
oscillating bodies in a wave field to be an acceptable approximation. due to viscous losses. Such changes can be related to turbine effi-
In the case of OWCs, this implies the inner free-surface to be ciency. We recall that the pressure in the chamber is pat þ p, where
simulated by a rigid piston. The possibility of employing commer- pat is the atmospheric pressure. During inhalation, it is p < 0, and air
cial codes based on the BEM is possibly the main reason why the with specific entropy s > sat is admitted to the chamber, where a
rigid piston model, rather than the more realistic surface pressure highly turbulent mixing process takes place (the increase in specific
distribution approach, is so popular in OWC theoretical/numerical entropy in the flow through the turbine is due to real fluid effects).
modelling. It is possible to modify a BEM code developed for the During exhalation, p > 0, air leaves the chamber through the tur-
study of floating bodies and extend it to the modelling of OWCs. bine in a process at approximately constant specific entropy for the
This was done with the radiation-diffraction code Aquadyn devel- air remaining in the chamber. The inhalation and exhalation pro-
oped at Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France, by modifying the dynamic cesses in an OWC were studied in some detail in Ref. [152]. A pol-
boundary condition on the internal water free surface to account ytropic relationship between the pressure p þ pat and the density
for the imposed oscillatory uniform pressure distribution within rch in the air chamber was proposed in Ref. [118]
the chamber [140]. The modified code was used to model the
shoreline OWC plant constructed at the island of Pico, Azores, pat þ p pat
¼ ; (29)
including the effect of surrounding coastline and non-flat bottom rkch rkat
[141]. A method was developed in Ref. [142] to apply a three-
dimensional BEM like WAMIT to model an OWC device account- where k is the polytropic exponent that is related to the average
ing for the appropriate interior free-surface boundary condition. efficiency h of the turbine (see Section 3.10 and [118] for a definition
The methods mentioned above are based on Laplace's equation of average efficiency). A good approximation to the relationship
and linear water wave theory, and are unable to model non-small proposed in Ref. [118] is
wave and body-motion amplitudes and real fluid dissipative ef-
fects like viscous friction, turbulence and eddy shedding. Such ef- k ¼ 0:13h2 þ 0:27h þ 1: (30)
fects may be important especially in the more energetic sea states
and under conditions close to resonance. Computational fluid dy- If h ¼ 1 (perfectly efficient turbine), then k ¼ 1.4, and Eq. (29) be-
namics (CFD) methods may be employed to account for such ef- comes simply the isentropic pressureedensity relationship. If
fects. They are usually based on the numerical integration of the h ¼ 0, it is k ¼ 1 and Eq. (29) becomes the isothermal relationship.
Reynolds-averaged NaviereStokes (RANS) equations together
with an appropriate turbulence model. Commercial and open- 4.3. Model testing of OWCs
source codes are available and have been used for wave energy
conversion applications, including especially OWCs. In some cases, The theoretical modelling based on linear water wave theory is
the computational domain has included the air flow field in the an essential step in the development of wave energy converters. It
OWC chamber. The use of such codes implies heavy computing. In provides insights and important information at relatively low costs,
some (possibly most) cases (see e.g. Refs. [143e148]), the geometry in general in a relatively fast way. However, there are important
is two-dimensional (the so-called numerical wave tank) and the non-linear effects that are not accounted for by this kind of
waves are regular (the computational effort required for calcula- modelling, namely those associated with large amplitude waves,
tions in irregular waves to be of statistical value can be prohibitive). large amplitude motions of the wave energy converter or
oscillating-water-column, and real fluid effects due to viscosity,
4.2. Thermodynamics of air chamber turbulence, and vortex shedding. Commercially available
computational-fluid-dynamics (CFD) codes, usually based on the
The volume of the air chamber of the OWC converter should be numerical integration of the Reynolds-averaged NaviereStokes
large enough to avoid ingestion of water by the air turbine under (RANS) equations, may be used to account for such effects. How-
rough sea conditions. Typical design values of the air chamber ever, even such codes, apart from being computationally
volume divided by the area of the OWC free surface range between demanding, require some experimental validation. Therefore
3 and 8 m, and are affected by tidal oscillations in fixed-structure physical model testing in a wave flume or wave tank is normally the
OWC devices. An increase in this ratio is not necessarily detri- next step. The scales range between about 1:100th in small wave
mental to the efficiency of the energy conversion. Obviously, if the flumes to about 1:10th in the largest wave tanks. Tests at larger
volume increases to very large values, the amplitude of the air scales (typically 1:4th to 1:3rd scale) sometimes take place in
pressure oscillations becomes very small, and the capability of the sheltered sea locations. We may apply dimensional analysis tech-
device to absorb wave energy vanishes. The spring-like effect of air niques to relate the conditions in model testing to those of the full-
compressibility in the chamber increases with chamber volume, sized prototype in real sea conditions. Dimensional analysis in
 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca 1419

model testing of wave energy converters in general is addressed in Now we assume more realistically that the atmospheric pres-
the pioneer book by McCormick [47] and more recently in Refs. sure is the same at both scales pat,m ¼ pat,F. We further assume that
[153e155]. The testing of OWCs raises specific issues, related to the the pressure oscillation p is much smaller than the atmospheric
turbine and the air compressibility effect in the chamber, that are pressure, which would exclude the more energetic sea states at full
addressed in Refs. [118,156]. scale. The following similarity condition can be obtained for the air
When performing model testing in waves, it is assumed that the chamber volume ratio [118]
wetted part of the model is an exact geometric representation of
the full-scale prototype. This geometric similarity is supposed to Vm km 2 1
¼ ε d ; (32)
apply also to the bottom and surrounding walls. The incident waves VF kF
may be represented by a given variance density spectrum (Pier-
soneMoskowitz or other (see e.g. Ref. [157]), Sf ðHs ; Te ; f Þ, where Hs where k is the polytropic exponent as defined in Section 4.2. In
is the significant wave height, Te is energy period (or some other model testing at large scale (say about 1:4th to 1:3rd) performed in
representative period) and f is frequency. In the case of regular the sea, it is d ¼ 1 (equal water density). If in addition an appro-
waves, Hs and Te are simply the wave height and period. priately scaled-sized turbine is used to realistically simulate the
Let L be a characteristic length (this could be a diameter in the full-sized machine, it is km y kF (if the turbine model is not too
case of an axisymmetric device). As before, we denote by p þ pat the small). Then, from Eq. (32), we have
pressure in the air chamber of the OWC converter. Buckingham's
Vm
theorem of dimensional analysis allows us to write ¼ ε2 : (33)
VF
 
P1 ¼ Q Hs =L; Fr; Re; Pp : (31) A result identical to Eq. (32) was first obtained in Ref. [149],
based on a frequency-domain analysis of the hydrodynamics and a
Here, Q is a function, Fr ¼ L1=2 g 1=2 Te1 is a Froude number, linearized isentropic assumption. It later appeared in other papers
Re ¼ L2 n1 Te1 is a Reynolds number, Pp ¼ pL1 r1 g 1 is dimen- (e.g. Refs. [150,151,155e158]). It shows that the scale ratio for air
sionless pressure, P1 ¼ PL7=2 r1 g 3=2 is dimensionless power, chamber volume should be ε2, rather than ε3. Failure to meet this
and r and n are water density and kinematic viscosity respectively. condition may result in substantial errors in the conversion to full
Identical relationships could be established by replacing P1 by scale of the experimental data at a smaller scale (for a numerical
other dimensionless quantities. If the four dimensionless variables case study, see Ref. [118]).
Fr, Re, Hs =L and Pp take equal values in the model and the full-sized If the OWC device is of fixed structure (possibly bottom-
prototype, the same will be true for P1 ; P2 ; :::. standing), it is not difficult to satisfy condition (32) at small
Let the subscripts m and F denote the model and the full-sized model scale. One simple way of achieving that is to connect the air
prototype. The length scale is defined as ε ¼ Lm/LF. The constancy chamber of the model to a rigid-walled reservoir of air of appro-
of the Froude number Fr and the Reynolds number Re cannot be priate volume. This procedure was adopted in the model testing of
satisfied simultaneously, since this would require nm =nF ¼ ε3=2 , a the bottom-standing OWC installed in 1999 on the island of Pico,
condition that is obviously unachievable in practice if ε is not close Azores, Portugal, as reported in Ref. [158]. If however a floating
to unity. In model testing, the effects due to variations in Froude OWC device is to be modelled at small scale, this could introduce
number are almost always much more important than those difficulties because the reservoir is likely not to be small compared
associated with changes in Reynolds number, and so the Reynolds with the device's size, and possibly is a lot larger.
number is ignored as a modelling rule. If the model scale is large enough (say not less than about 1:4th),
The expression of dimensionless power P1 ¼ PL7=2 r1 g 3=2 the model may be equipped with a real turbine (rather than a
shows that the scale ratio for power is ε7/2 (if variations in water simple orifice or a porous plug). In such cases (in which the water
density r are neglected). In model testing of wave energy con- density is that of sea water), if the model turbine is geometrically
verters in the largest wave tanks, the length scale ε in general does similar to the full-sized one and both are equally efficient, the
not exceed about 1:10th. This implies a maximum power ratio of following similarity conditions can be obtained for the rotor
about 1:3200. In the case of an OWC wave energy converter, this diameter D and rotational speed U (see Ref. [118])
scale is too small for the turbine to be simulated adequately by a
mini-turbine. The usual procedure is to simulate the turbine by an Dm Um
¼ ε; ¼ ε1=2 : (34)
orifice, if the turbine is of impulse type or by a layer of porous DF UF
material, where the flow is approximately laminar and simulates a
This shows that the linear scale for the turbine should be the
linear turbine like the Wells turbine. Only in tests performed under
same as for the wetted part of the structure.
real sea conditions at scales not less than about 1:4th, is a real
turbine fitted to the model. This was done in the sheltered waters of
Galway Bay, Ireland, at scale 1:4th, with a Backward Bent Duct Buoy 5. Control
(BBDB) (the OE Buoy) fitted first with a Wells turbine and later with
an impulse turbine [41,42], Fig. 18. 5.1. Reactive phase control
We consider now that the Froude geometric similarity is
extended to the part of the device located above water level, In WECs of oscillating-body and OWC types, the highest effi-
namely the air chamber and its air volume V, i.e. Vm/VF ¼ ε3. This ciency of wave energy absorption from regular waves is attained
would allow realistic representation of water motion inside the under conditions close to resonance. Especially in the case of
chamber and provide information on how to avoid green water relatively small devices (the so-called point absorbers), it is well
from reaching the air turbine. However, that would require pat,m/ known that the resonance bandwidth is relatively narrow, which
pat,F ¼ ε d. (d ¼ rm/rF) (see Ref. [118]) The latter condition, con- implies that their performance in irregular waves is relatively poor.
cerning atmospheric pressure, is obviously impossible to satisfy in Besides, for many point absorbers, the natural frequency of reso-
practice if the length scale ε is not close to unity. This impossibility nance is higher than the typical frequency of the waves. Phase
was recognized in Ref. [156] and examined in more detail in Ref. control has been proposed to improve these situations [159e161].
[118]. Reactive phase control is a way of doing that: reactive power
1420 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca

contributes nothing to the average delivered power and is back- very fast and mechanically very complex valve with an elastomeric
and-forth exchange of energy between the PTO and the oscil- membrane was designed and constructed to be mounted in series
lating system. This energy may be stored in a flywheel, a gas with the 400 kW variable-pitch Wells turbine at the Pico, Azores
accumulator, a battery of condensers, or may be supplied by the OWC plant [167], but was never installed. Latching may be less
electrical grid. A major drawback of reactive phase control is the difficult if the turbine is of radial-flow type, in which case an
energy loss by dissipative processes inherent to the back-and-forth axially-sliding cylindrical valve with a relatively small stroke may
energy exchange, especially if the magnitude of such exchanged be positioned close to the rotor [168].
energy is comparable to, or even significantly larger than, the net The forces involved in latching of oscillating-body WECs may be
absorbed energy. This may be the case of point absorbers. Reactive very large, and have to be supported by the PTO or by a special
phase control is particularly appropriate if the PTO is a high- braking system. This has been regarded has a major problem for
pressure hydraulic circuit with gas accumulator, where the fluid this type of phase control. Latching forces on air valves are much
flow may be reversed by controlling the valve system. This may also smaller in the case of OWCs, since the area of the valve surface
be achieved in the case of direct electrical energy conversion (linear subject to the chamber pressure is a small fraction of the area of the
or rotating generator) by two-way exchange of energy with the water column free surface.
grid. Model testing of a fixed-structure OWC showed that substantial
Reactive control has also been considered for OWCs equipped gains can be achieved by latching based on a causal algorithm [169]
with self-rectifying air turbines. If the setting angle of the rotor (air compressibility effects were not simulated). As in the case of an
blades of a Wells turbine is controllable within a sufficiently wide oscillating two-body WEC versus a single-body one, latching con-
range (say ±20 ), then the machine can operate either as a turbine trol of a floating OWC converter raises more difficult problems than
or as a compressor, and may be used to achieve reactive control for a fixed-structure OWC, since the closure of the latching valve
[162e164]. A 400 kW variable-pitch Wells turbine, whose sophis- does not stop the motion either of the OWC or of the floater. Nu-
ticated control mechanism was driven by eddy currents (Fig. 29), merical simulations of latching control of an OWC spar-buoy in
was built to be tested in the Pico plant, Azores, Portugal [82,112], regular waves revealed that large gains in produced energy can be
but was never installed. The relatively modest efficiency of the achieved over a wide range of wave frequencies [170]. However the
Wells turbine, especially when operating in the compressor mode, gains were found to be more modest when similar methods,
severely limits the gains from reactive control [165]. This, in addi- namely causal control, were extended to irregular waves [171],
tion to the much higher mechanical complexity of the turbine and which seems to indicate that more sophisticated control methods,
inherent reliability problems, has deterred the use of reactive possibly model predictive control, will be required for more satis-
control in OWCs. factory results. Latching control of OWCs appears as a way of sub-
stantially increasing the power produced by OWCs that is worth
5.2. Phase control by latching further investigation.

An alternative to reactive phase control is control by latching. 5.3. Turbine rotational speed and air flow control
This was first proposed for single oscillating bodies reacting against
a fixed reference frame (in general the sea bottom) [160], and The rotational speed should be adjusted to the pneumatic en-
consists in latching the body in a fixed position during certain in- ergy level available to the turbine, more precisely to the standard
tervals of the oscillation cycle. deviation (or root-mean-square) sp of the pressure oscillation p. In
In principle, reactive control may be optimal, i.e. may allow the Section 3.10, it was shown from dimensional analysis that the
theoretical maximum wave energy capture, as predicted by linear average efficiency h of a given turbine (or a set of geometrically
water wave theory, to be achieved in unconstrained amplitude similar turbines) is a function of the dimensionless standard devi-
conditions (such optimal control is non-causal). This is not the case ation (or root-mean-square) sJ of the pressure oscillation p. In
of control by latching, that is necessarily suboptimal [127]. On the particular, its maximum value hmax occurs for sJ,max. the corre-
other hand, latching control avoids the two-way energy transfer sponding value for the averaged turbine power output being Pmax .
and the associated energy dissipation that characterize a reactively In the case of the Wells turbine and the biradial turbine considered
phase-controlled PTO. In the case of an OWC converter, latching is in Section 3.10, it is sJ,max ¼ 0.022 and 0.34, respectively. From the
achieved by closing a valve in series with the turbine. definition of sJ (Eq. (14)), it follows that the rotational speed U
Latching control of an OWC was analysed for the first time in pffiffiffiffiffi
should be proportional sp . Apart from affecting the turbine
Ref. [166], where air compressibility was ignored, and [150] where aerodynamic efficiency, changes in rotational speed also affect the
the air compressibility in the chamber was accounted for, but only damping provided by the PTO (i.e. the relationship between pres-
regular waves were considered and the analysis was in the fre- sure and flow rate) and in this way affect the hydrodynamic per-
quency domain. Both papers considered a fixed-structure OWC. formance of the wave energy absorption process. For this reason,
Pontryagin maximum principle was used in Ref. [166] to show that the control algorithm for the rotational speed should take into
the optimal control is bangebang, i.e. the position of the valve is account both the hydrodynamic and the aerodynamic efficiencies.
either fully open or fully closed. An algorithm that has been proposed based, on numerical simu-
There are specific problems related to latching control of an lation of fixed structure and floating OWCs, is of the form
OWC. One is the compressibility of the air in the chamber that acts
as a spring and prevents the water column to remain fixed with Tem ¼ constant
Uz ; (35)
respect to the structure, even if the air flow is stopped at the
entrance to the turbine. Besides, it should be noted that such where Tem is the instantaneous electromagnetic torque on the
compressibility may remove the constraint of the latching generator rotor, U is the instantaneous rotational velocity and z is
threshold having to coincide with an instant of zero (relative) ve- an exponent taking a value typically not very different from 2,
locity. Another problem, especially if the turbine is of axial-flow depending on the OWC and turbine (see Refs. [79,119,172]). This
type (as the Wells turbine and most self-rectifying impulse tur- algorithm should be implemented in the programmable logic
bines), is the practical difficulty of designing and constructing a controller (PLC) of the plant through the power electronics. Note
valve with a response time not exceeding a few tens of a second. A that if should be exactly z ¼ 2 if the average aerodynamic efficiency
 ~o, J.C.C. Henriques / Renewable Energy 85 (2016) 1391e1424
A.F.O. Falca 1421

of the turbine rather than the overall average efficiency is to be the turbine and, in general to a lesser extent, the hydrodynamic
maximized. The implications of rotational speed control on the efficiency of the wave absorption process. Algorithms have been
electrical equipment are addressed in Ref. [173]. proposed to control the rotational speed, expressing the electro-
Control algorithm (35) may yield values for the rotational speed magnetic torque on the generator rotor as a function of the
that, in the more energetic sea states, exceed what should be instantaneous rotational speed.
allowed from the viewpoint of centrifugal stresses. This is espe-
cially critical in the case of Wells turbines, because of their typically Acknowledgements
high rotor blade tip speed; a maximum limit about 150e170 m/s
has sometimes been established for the blade tip speed. Such This work was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for the
constraint results, in the case of the more energetic sea states, in the Science and Technology (FCT) through IDMEC, under LAETA, project
value of sJ substantially exceeding sJ,max as defined above. UID/EMS/50022/2013. The second author was supported by FCT
Fig. 43a shows that the Wells turbine average efficiency h decays researcher grant No. IF/01457/2014.
rapidly with sJ for sJ > sJ,max. To prevent such unwanted effi-
ciency decay to low values in the more energetic sea states, it has
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