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Publications
Kamarlouei, M., Gaspar, J.F. and Guedes Soares, C. (2018), “Evaluating a novel control strategy to improve the performance of hydraulic power take-offs in wave energy converters”, Maritime Transportation and Harvesting of Sea Resources, Guedes Soares, C. & Teixeira A.P. (Eds.), Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK, pp. 1185-1192
The aim of this paper is to present a solution for oil-hydraulic power take-offs (PTOs) employed in wave energy converters (WECs) in order to increase the average pressure produced by cylinders in various incident wave groups. The hydraulic PTO transforms slow, irregular oscillatory wave motions to reasonably smooth, fast circumrotation of an electrical generator. The study of the hydraulic PTO system and its control are critical to maximize the harvested power and the overall efficiency of the WEC. Meanwhile, hydraulic cylinders must be handled in order to operate near or above 210 bar while they are attached to axial piston pumps and their efficiency drops significantly for pressure levels below this one. The main design argument is to find out a solution for increasing the average pressure produced by the cylinder when operating with lower sea states and decrease it when running at the higher ones. A control strategy based on time series prediction of pressure in the cylinder is employed to switch between operation modes of the cylinder in different situations. The controller takes the advantage of neural networks to predict the pressure inside chambers and switch the modes to keep the average pressure in an optimum level. The difference between these two operational modes is mainly related to the cross-sectional area of the rod and rodless chambers, which is lower in the first case.
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