Fundamentals of Wave Energy Conversions: The Dynamics of the Wave-Structure Interactions and Wave Energy Optimisation

This is a book aiming to provide some fundamental materials and examples for better understandings to the wave energy conversion and extraction. This book is organised in chapters on different topics, and there are total 13 chapters, including: the brief history and introduction of wave energy utilisation (Ch. 1); the basics of the fluid dynamics (Ch2) and potential flow theory (Ch. 3); the linear wave theory (Ch. 4) and wind-generated waves (Ch5); potential flow theory for fluid-structure interactions (Ch6); the potential decompositions for diffraction and radiation problems (Ch. 7); the panel method for solving the potential flow problem (Ch. 8); the principles of wave energy conversion (Ch. 9); the power take-off optimisation for improving wave energy extraction (Ch10); time-domain method and analysis (Ch. 11); control technologies for improving wave energy extraction (Ch. 12); the fundamentals of physical modelling for wave energy converters (Ch. 13). In all those chapters, some detailed basics, and deep fundamentals and understandings are provided for why we need to study the wave energy conversions using the potential flow theory, and how we can numerically study the wave energy conversion and extraction more reliably and accurately, while the modelling will not become a computational burden. In reality, this is the most popular method, although for different wave energy converters, different issues may be treated differently, but the overall principles are very similar. For this purpose, this book provides the detailed and yet deep fundamentals and understandings to the principle, with the relevant example to help to understand the problems better.