Supported Projects

Globally, marine ecosystem degradation and fish population overexploitation have resulted in significant marine biodiversity loss. Artificial reefs, designed to bolster oceanic habitats by serving as shelter, spawning grounds, and feeding areas, play a pivotal role in mimicking natural reef environments for marine conservation and habitat restoration.

In Torbay, United Kingdom, Reef Cubes®, innovative artificial reef units created by ARC Marine, undergo deployment and testing to assess their impact on enhancing marine biodiversity.

Simultaneously, the University of Plymouth is conducting numerical investigations into flow field characteristics both around and within these structures. Various configurations and orientations are explored to identify the most suitable structures in terms of flow velocities for marine organisms and assess the positional stability of these cubes. This research aims to optimize the artificial reef environment for marine life.

Harnessing the immense potential of wave energy for a sustainable future drives the wave energy converter (WEC) community. However, wave energy farms, consisting of multiple point absorbers that convert wave motion into electricity, face complex challenges. This project aims to enhance the performance of WEC arrays through advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The interactions between devices and the surrounding fluid profoundly impact the array’s overall performance. To tackle these challenges, a state-of-the-art CFD solver will be developed within the OpenFOAM library to model multiple WECs within a wave energy farm. Leveraging the powerful ARCHER2 High-Performance Computing system, the project will conduct large-scale simulations, exploring arrays composed of several WECs in ocean waves. By investigating various layouts and studying nonlinear interactions between waves and floating bodies, the goal is to optimize power production and maximize array performance.

The project’s outcomes will provide valuable insights and guidelines for designing efficient wave energy farms. The team will freely share post-processed numerical data sets with academic and industrial communities, fostering innovation in renewable energy technologies. Moreover, the findings will be disseminated through high-impact publications, driving progress in the wave energy sector. This research is a significant step toward realizing the full potential of wave energy and advancing our sustainable energy future.

Mocean Energy Ltd are an Edinburgh-based company developing wave energy converters (WECs) to extract energy from ocean waves and convert this into electrical energy. The company utilises optimisation algorithms to generate devices that provide the optimal solution to a given set of design requirements. This optimisation process generated a device geometry featuring inclined channels on either end of the deice. These “wave channels” resulted in a design which exhibits (and is capable of exploiting) a form of wave resonance within the channels. This project seeks to identify the hydrodynamic mechanism that is the source of this phenomenon. The project involves numerical and computational investigation to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that underpin this resonance.