Latching Control of an Oscillating Water Column Device with Air Compressibility

A linearised model of air compressibility is developed and integrated with the conventional hydrodynamic model of an OWC. This is optimised in the frequency domain and the effects of compressibility are explored. Numerical predictions are validated by experiment. A latching control strategy is described and optimised by first harmonic methods. Simulations show that the approximate frequency domain analysis is accurate and that useful gains in efficiency can be realised by latching.