One Degree of Freedom Gyroscopic Mechanism for Wave Energy Converters

Sea waves are one of the most interesting and well distributed renewable energy sources in the world. At the current state of the art, all the existing sea wave energy conversion systems are designed to operate offshore, mainly in the oceans where the waves’ height is definitely high. In the Mediterranean Sea, waves are generally low, except under particular meteorological conditions. Thus, it is necessary to develop devices that can exploit other properties of the waves instead of their height, like wave slopes. In this work a solution for this application is analysed, based on a conversion device characterised by floating positioning (without fixed link or basement at depth level), vertical axis geometry (to exploit any kind of wave, regardless of their direction, without the need for orientation systems), working principle based on an inertial system obtained by a rotor thanks to gyroscopic effect (that can be tuned to maximise the efficiency of the transformation process), and ability to work even with low amplitude waves (up to 0.5 m) typical of the Mediterranean Sea. The work follows three steps: first of all, the mechanical system is described with an analytical approach, secondly the mathematical model is implemented, and, finally, it’s tested in simulated sea environments. A system analytical model will be shown and some numerical results will be remarked.© 2008 ASME