Advanced Features and Recent Developments in the WEC-Sim Open-Source Design Tool: Preprint
Leon, Jorge; Grasberger, Jeff; Forbush, Dominic; Sirigu, Massimo; Ancellin, Matthieu; Tom, Nathan; Keester, Adam; Ruehl, Kelley; Ogden, David; Husain, Salman · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 2024
WEC-Sim is an open-source tool developed in Matlab/Simulink to simulate wave energy converters. WEC-Sim has been developed jointly by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) since its initial release in 2014. WEC-Sim simulations are performed in the time domain based on the radiation and diffraction method using hydrodynamics coefficients derived from boundary element method (BEM)-based frequency-domain potential flow solvers (e.g., WAMIT, NEMOH, Capytaine, or ANSYS-AQWA). Within this level of modeling fidelity, WEC-Sim can handle floating body hydrodynamics, mechanical and electrical power generation methods, advanced control implementation, mooring systems, and other unique applications such as desalination. WEC-Sim functionalities are developed using Simulink blocks and Matlab functions. WEC-Sim is capabilities include simulation of different wave conditions, constraints and PTOs, body dynamics, mooring systems, among other advanced features such as nonlinear hydrodynamics, nonlinear PTOs, body-to-body interactions, etc.