WaveSpring for enhancing wave energy absorption

This project will work towards the reduction of the cost of energy of wave energy converters by coupling to the wave energy devices a negative spring assembly that can enlarge the frequency response, and at the same time increase the power absorption of heaving and pitching based wave energy converters, thus avoiding having to feed energy to the system via active control.
We propose in this project to investigate further the negative spring assembly also named WaveSpring. The concept will be tested on bottom fixed heaving buoys and pitching buoys. A detailed study of the effect of the Wavespring will be performed. This includes the complete optimization of the damping coefficient for the different sea states chosen. The WaveSpring gives the possibility of reducing the mass of the buoy, thus reducing the amount of material of the final device. The study of the gain in harvested power as a function of the mass of the buoy will also be done. A detailed cost of energy study will conclude the work and will prove the key hypothesis of the project: It is possible to reduce the Cost of Energy from Wave Energy Converters by utilizing the WaveSpring.