A research group led by Choe Kwang Hyok, an institute head at the Faculty of Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering, has developed a wave power device for providing power of a navigation and marking buoy.
The device is a floating WAB (wave activated body) and it consists of a point absorber, power take-off (PTO) of a wave energy converter, an electric generator, etc.
The point absorber consists of a floating body, a spar and a heave plate.
The floating body is heaved on wave surfaces and the spar is a relatively fixed body by a mooring system. The heave plate is strongly connected with the spar and it can effectively improve the heave response of the device by providing additional damping and added mass.
When the wave power device is on the water surface, the floating buoy and spar oscillate up and down vertically due to the wave. At that time, the link attached to the floating buoy moves up and down by relative amplitude differences occurring in the amplitude and phase of two buoys and the alternating motion of the link changes into rotary motion through the specially designed chain driving device.
The rotary motion of the chain driving device increases up to the rated rotary velocity of the generator and it is transmitted to the generator through the multiplying gear (1:3) and the belt (1:3), which generates power of up to 100w at the wave height 0.2~1m.
The diameters of the floating buoy, the spar and the heave plate are 1.2m, 0.3m, 1m respectively and the whole mass is 980kg.
The wave power device can be utilized to supply power not only to navigation and marking buoys, but also to other measuring and monitoring devices on the sea.
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