Worldwide there are numerous organizations and individuals developing computational analysis methods and applying these tools to analyze the performance and dynamic loading of wave and ocean current devices. The goal of this workshop was to bring together these expert analysts to exchange information and experience on all aspects of developing, using, verifying and validating these computational modeling tools to improve these modeling capabilities for the mutual benefit of the global ocean energy industry.
The workshop was attended by a total of 50 participants from 12 different countries. Over the 2 day workshop, there were 27 presentations given by the participants. The categories of marine energy computational modeling and analysis presented at the meeting were as follows:
Session 1: Tidal and Current Converter Design – 7 presentations
Session 2: Resource Assessment/More Tidal and Current Converter Design – 7 presentations
Session 3 & Session 4: Wave Energy Converter Design – 13 presentations
At the conclusion of the presentations for each day of the two day workshop, a facilitated discussion session was held to address the following three questions:
1. Would it be helpful to develop a public listing, or database, of applicable modeling codes including both commercial and open source codes that could be used for analysis of wave and tidal machines?
2. Following this workshop what type of further effort would be most helpful to accelerate the development and deployment of wave and tidal energy systems?
3. What are the best practices for modeling wave and tidal machines?
The take away conclusions from the workshop are that there are a number of currently available computational codes, both commercial and open source, being employed for numerical simulation of tidal and wave energy devices. Each participant gave a presentation highlighting the application of a particular wave or tidal computational code that they have been developing or using for analysis of wave and tidal devices. The workshop participants concluded that:
1. A listing of the available wave and tidal computational modeling tools with a brief description of their capabilities and a link to more in-depth information would be helpful for developers and new entrants into the marine energy field.
2. A wave and tidal computational code benchmarking activity using data from a set of welldesigned experiments would be extremely useful for the entire global community, because these codes need to be rigorously validated for marine energy applications. Most of the workshop participants would like to participate in planning and executing such a program, if funding sources could be identified.
3. It is premature to establish best modeling practices until the benchmarking activity described above is completed and the knowledge gained is assimilated by the ocean energy industry.
