On the S-shaped floaters for a Wavestar-like wave energy converter with an I-shaped mechanical power take-off

•The effects of an S-shaped buoy on the PTO performance were studied in a Wavestar-like WEC.•Experiments were conducted in a lab-scale facility to verify the hydrodynamic simulations.•A novel algorithm based on ANSYS AQWA and MATLAB Simscape was proposed.•The PTO achieved 26% greater output power with an S-shaped buoy than the C-HS.