Turbulence Modelling for Ocean Wave Energy Systems

Ocean wave energy systems (OWES) have a strong potential to contribute to the satisfaction of the global energy demand. Hence, the research and development (R&D) of new types of OWES can be seen as an encouraging, though challenging task. As in classical naval architecture, turbulent viscous effects play a significant role and have to be considered in numerical models. Nevertheless, the numerical modeling community in the field of OWES lacks best practice guidelines how to efficiently and accurately account for these effects. As a first step towards general guideline on the use of turbulence modeling for OWES, a comparative study of different turbulence models applied to a number generic devices will be presented.