ABSTRACT
Combing the wave energy devices with coastal structures has drawn increasing attention during the past years due to the multi-function of the integrated system. In this study, the hydrodynamic performance of a floating breakwater integrated with multi-pneumatic chambers is experimentally investigated. The pneumatic chambers (i.e., OWC) were inserted into the breakwater side by side in the wave crest direction, i.e., in the longitudinal direction of the breakwater. And the breakwater length was set to equal to the flume width. The effect of the number of the chambers on the hydrodynamic performance of the integrated system was investigated by keeping the total length of the breakwater constant. The results indicate that the reflected waves can be reduced effectively by integrated OWC chambers into the breakwater.
Combing the wave energy converters (WECs) with marine structures has drawn increasing attention during the past years due to the multifunction of the integrated system (Zhao and Ning, 2018). The multifunctionality, cost-sharing, and space-sharing of the hybrid structures can be achieved with the integration system. In the recent years, the integrated system of breakwater-WEC (Mustapa et al., 2017) are widely investigated because its provides both energy extraction and coast protection abilities.
Tseng et al. (2000) and Boccotti et al. (2007) investigated the hydrodynamic performance of a caisson breakwater and oscillating water column (OWC) combined system. Boccotti (2007) analytical investigated the hydrodynamic performance of a caisson breakwater with an U-OWC device embedded. Martins-Rivas and Mei (2009) theoretically studied the hydrodynamic performance of a single OWC installed at the tip of a long and thin breakwater. They reported that the incidence angle affects the waves outside the structure but not the extracted power. He et al. (2012) experimentally investigated the hydrodynamic performance of floating breakwaters with and without pneumatic chambers. They found that the wave transmission is significantly reduced by introducing the pneumatic chambers. Later, He et al. (2016) investigated the wave energy extraction and vortex-induced energy loss of pile-supported OWC-type breakwaters based on a two-point measurement method. It can be seen that, these studies focused mainly on the hydrodynamics of a fixed/floating breakwaters with a single OWC chamber/two OWC chambers in the wave direction integrated, i.e., in two-dimension.
