A Control System For Constrained Wave-Powered Oceanographic Buoys

Abstract

Wave energy can be used to power oceanographic buoys. A new switching control strategy is developed in this paper for a two-body heaving wave energy converter that is composed of a floating cylinder and two rigidly connected submerged hemispheres. This control strategy is designed to prevent excessive displacement of the floating buoy that may occur due to the actuator force. This control strategy switches the control between a multi-resonant controller and a nonlinear damping controller, depending on the state of the system, to account for displacement constraints. This control strategy is developed using a one-degree-of-freedom dynamic model for the relative motion of the two bodies. Estimation of the relative motion, needed for feedback control, is carried out using a Kalman filter. Numerical simulations are conducted to select the proper mooring stiffness. The controller is tested with stochastic models of irregular waves in this paper. The performance of the controller with different sea states is discussed. Annual power production using this control strategy is presented based on real data in 2015 published by Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory.