Mesh independence study for an onshore OWC using Richardson's extrapolation: Numerical and analytical analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15282/jmes.19.3.2025.1.0839Keywords:
Analytical modeling, CFD, Richardson's extrapolation, Independence study, Numerical simulation, OWCAbstract
Wave energy converters can be a promising option for wave energy, which is among them, aims to be a crucial device for new studies and essential for energy transformation due to its geographical versatility and adaptation to different wave conditions, still being the subject of research and development in the field of renewable energy. The spatial study to evaluate the behavior of Oscillating Water Column (OWC) has been a major problem towards the simulated analysis of these devices due to their high computational cost. OWC is a device that harnesses the oscillatory motion of seawater inside a partially submerged chamber, this movement compresses and decompresses the air column above, driving a turbine connected to a generator and converting wave energy into usable electricity. This study aimed to evaluate the spatial and temporal mesh independence of an onshore OWC using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Richardson’s Extrapolation (RE). The CFD analysis was performed using ANSYS-Fluent software, and an RE study was conducted to improve the accuracy of the results by extrapolated solutions for different efficiency values obtained from the domain discretization levels. Indeed, 10 treatments were carried out to study the spatial (M0, M1, M2, M3 and M4) and temporal (M2T1, M2T2, M2T1to2, M2T3 and M2T4). mesh independence. The results demonstrate, in addition to the inclusion of the analytical second-order Stokes equation, that RE was instrumental in testing the incoming wave front, observing the behavior of the OWC and reducing its computational cost. M2 and M2T1to2, were the treatments chosen for the spatial and temporal independence analysis, respectively. The extrapolated values correspond to about 28.0227% (M2) and 33.5412% (M2T1to2). These findings support the use of RE as a reliable tool for mesh validation in CFD simulations, optimizing computational efficiency while ensuring robust results.
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