Numerical analysis and performance assessment of trapezoidal oscillating water columns

Oscillating water column (OWC) device serve as a wave energy conversion tool in the on-shore and off-shore environment. This study encompasses the literature on OWC with single and multi-chambers for efficiency improvement. Geometrical configurations are modified from rectangular to trapezoidal in order to understand the fluid dynamics inside the OWC. The pressure drop and wave elevations are carefully matched and validated first and error limits are analysed. Further studies continue with the air pressure rise and fall inside the OWC and therefore the power-take off for the wave configurations is calculated. The dual OWC configuration separated by a wavelength distance offers the highest capture width ratio at all wave height and time periods. From the results, the capture width ratio is significant with the trapezoidal tandem configuration which is 9.96% increase with respect to a single-OWC configuration. A marginal increase of 2.87% is observed in trapezoidal case against rectangular shape in the context of tandem configuration.