On Mooring Solutions for Large Wave Energy Converters

The present paper describes the work carriedout in the project ’Mooring Solutions for Large Wave Energy Converters’, which is a Danish research project carried out in aperiod of three years from September 2014, with the aim of reducing cost of the moorings for four wave energy converters and improving the applied design procedure.The paper presents the initial layouts and costs and illustrates which solutions could potentially reduce cost. Different methods foranalysis of the systems were applied, ranging from simplequasi - static analysis to full dynamic analysis and experimental work. The numerical methods were compared to the experimental data, and results showed significant underestimation of tensions inthequasi - static model while reasonable overestimation was found in the dynamic analysis even without major tuning of the model. The dynamic analysis has then been implemented in a meta - model based optimization process with the aim of optimizing the mooring layout for each WEC according to cost of the systems