Studies on renewable energy generation systems are increasing with the growth of problems for the existing energy resources such as fossil fuels. Among the renewable energy generation, the generation in an offshore site is in limelight due to various energy resources and vast space. Wave energy generation using the potential and kinetic energies of the wave is possible to produce large-capacity energy generation considering installation site and characteristic of a system. In this work, the structural analyses on the arm structure of oscillating type wave energy converter are conducted. This type of structure consists of a support structure, floater, and connection arm connecting the structures. And PTO (Power Take-Off) device is attached to connection arm and has the role of maintaining a generation efficiency by controlling motions of the floater. As wave-induced force from floater, and PTO damping one are applied to connection arm, the structure must have structural safety enough for environmental conditions. To perform the structural analyses on connection arm, static and dynamic analyses could be used. Static analysis method have the advantage of simple modeling and fast computation time rather than dynamic one. But this analysis method cannot deal with dynamic property of a structure in the time domain. Thus, in case that needs to consider these dynamic phenomenon, a timedomain dynamic analysis should be performed. In this study, the results of two analysis methods are compared and the application of the methods is considered.
The researches and developments on various renewable energies are increasing as the growth of problems on the depletion of existing energy resources like fossil fuel and environmental pollution. To resolve a limited generation area, civil complaints, and so on, marine renewable energy generation that could use offshore sites and energy resources including wave, wind, current, and so on is being in limelight. Among these marine renewable energy generations, wave energy generation that utilizes kinetic and potential energies of wave is a proper generation for sites having a higher wave height and long wave period, and have the various generation type. There are oscillating body types, oscillating water column types, wave overtopping types as energy generation types, and a large capacity of energy generation is possible depending on a generation site, characteristic of energy converter, and so on.
