Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

A Conceptual Design Tool for High-performance Wave Energy Converters for Blue Economy Applications

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/p26773210

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  • Much like wind energy in its early years, marine energy has vast potential, and wave energy converter (WEC) concepts are constantly in development. Consequently, wave energy faces many challenges for expansion and has a wide-ranging design space of WEC concepts. The large design space demands new methods for understanding the potential performance of early-design stage concepts. The Technology Performance Level (TPL) metric has been a proposed method for early-stage concept assessment. However, previous research has shown that the TPL is not designed in such a way that it is able to distinguish between multiple early-stage, low-fidelity concepts. Therefore, we created a conceptual design tool to complement the TPL assessment to help wave energy developers during the design stage, rather than a quantitative assessment metric. The tool integrates knowledge from TPL and a blue economy emerging market stakeholder analysis. The tool guides marine energy developers during the conceptual design of a wave energy converter by presenting designers with established practices, asking if their concept is able to meet these practices and constraints, and providing design feedback based on the answers. Previous sustainable product design research shows tools that help designers integrate knowledge at the concept stage positively impact deliberate sustainable design decisions. Through the tool’s feedback, we hope to help designers identify specific changes and actions to improve their system early in the design process, subsequently leading to improved TPL ratings during device embodiment design. We worked closely with Oregon State University’s 2020 and 2021 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition team to understand the tool’s ability to create awareness and improve concepts. In this paper, we document the architecture, content, and results from our first tests of the tool. While this study is limited by the number of participants, it serves as a proof of concept for the effectiveness of this tool and provides insight for further improvement of the tool’s structure and content. Creating awareness of oversights early in the design process will help wave energy developers effectively engage stakeholder requirements, increasing the appeal of a wave energy converter concept to marine energy stakeholders.
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  • This research was sponsored by the US Department of Energy through the Oregon State University Advanced Laboratory and Field Arrays for Marine Energy and Laboratory Collaboration Project, grant DE-EE0006816.0005.
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