Abstract
While some engineering fields have benefited from systematic design
optimization studies, wave energy converters have yet to successfully
incorporate such analyses into practical engineering workflows. The
current iterative approach to wave energy converter design leads to
suboptimal solutions. This short paper presents an open-source MATLAB
toolbox for performing design optimization studies on wave energy
converters where power take-off behavior and realistic constraints can
be easily included. This tool incorporates an adaptable control
co-design approach, in that a constrained optimal controller is used to
simulate device dynamics and populate an arbitrary objective function of
the user’s choosing. A brief explanation of the tool’s structure and
underlying theory is presented. In order to demonstrate the capabilities
of the tool, verify its functionality, and begin to explore some basic
wave energy converter design relationships, three conceptual case
studies are presented. In particular, the importance of considering (and
constraining) the magnitudes of device motion and forces is shown.