Wave climate investigation for an array of wave power devices

This paper presents the results of a study carried out to determine the change in wave climate around an array of hypothetical wave devices. The main objective of this work is to investigate the change in wave height in the upstream and downstream of the devices for different levels of wave absorption. This is achieved by modeling the wave devices as porous structures with different porosity levels, with the inclusion of partial reflection and partial transmission. The MIKE 21 suite wave models, (i) Spectral wave and (ii) Boussinesq wave are used for this purpose. The former wave model is employed for the estimation of various phase averaged wave parameters for the Orkney Islands. These wave parameters are then used as input to the Boussinesq model to study wave-device array interactions. The results are presented in the form of wave disturbance coefficients defined as a ratio of the significant wave height at a particular location relative to the incoming or input significant wave height. This study illustrates how the variations in wave absorption by the devices affect the degree of wave reflection and transmission around the devices.