Practical considerations on nonlinear stiffness system for wave energy converter

Mechanical restoration of a point absorber (PA) wave energy converter (WEC) featured a nonlinear stiffness system built by conventional mechanical compression springs (NSMech). Numerical simulations conducted here considered irregular waves in a specific sea site. Results showed considerable improvement for a given suitable spring configuration (length and stiffness parameters). However, practical implementation of NSMech imposed limiting constraints on the geometrical and physical characteristics of the mechanical compression springs. Such constraints limited very much the feasible region of NSMech configurations, restricting significantly applications for wave energy converter. One alternative approach using pneumatic cylinder springs proved to overcome such a limitation aggregating obvious advantages with fewer elements and bringing more enhancement to the WEC performance.