Design and numerical simulations of a flow induced vibration energy converter for underwater mooring platforms

Limited battery energy restricts the duration of the underwater operation of underwater mooring platforms (UMPs). In this paper, a flow-induced vibration energy converter (FIVEC) is designed to produce power for the UMPs and extend their operational time. The FIVEC is equipped with a thin plate to capture the kinetic energy in the vortices shed from the surface of the UMP. A magnetic coupling (MC) is applied for the non-contacting transmission of the plate torque to the generators so that the friction loss can be minimized. In order to quantify and evaluate the performance of the FIVEC, two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed. Simulations are based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and the shear stress transport (SST) k-w turbulent model is utilized. The CFD method is firstly validated using existing experimental data. Then the influences of plate length and system damping on the performance of the FIVEC are evaluated. The results show that the device has a maximum averaged power coefficient of 0.0520 (13.86 W) in the considered situations. The results also demonstrate the feasibility of this energy converter plan.