LEAP-HI: US-Ireland R&D Partnership: Control Co-Design for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion

联合国将2020年代定为“海洋科学促进可持续发展十年”。沿着沿着美国、爱尔兰和英国漫长的海岸线，海浪代表着一种巨大的、未开发的、高密度的能源。据估计，波浪能有潜力提供美国至少三分之一的电力需求。尽管波浪能具有提供电力的巨大潜力，但波浪能转换在世界范围内仍处于起步阶段，迄今为止没有一种波浪能转换器（WEC）获得广泛接受。这个领先的工程为美国的繁荣，健康和基础设施（LEAP-HI）项目将研究的基本理论和设计工具，需要设计实用的波能转换器系统在一个集成的方式。它将通过三个国家的五名研究人员在整个共同设计过程中的跨学科合作完成，从早期的概念设计和组件创新到系统集成和现场验证。波浪能转换研究的成功将有助于缓解全球能源危机，应对气候变化，缓解环境问题，加速蓝色经济发展，造福社会。它还将作为一个示范，激励全球合作，以解决全球能源可持续性危机，并建立美国-欧洲在新兴的蓝色经济领域的合作领导地位。为了使WEC有效地将能量从波浪转换为电线，需要进行多学科研究，包括波浪捕获结构（WCS）以捕获振荡的不规则波浪能量作为机械能，动力输出（PTO）子系统将机械能转换为电力，以及先进的控制以使设备适应不规则波浪激励并优化动力捕获。这些模块中的每一个都需要特定于领域的专业知识，这些专业知识通常由领域专家按顺序解决。这种顺序设计模式忽略了WCS流体动力学、PTO动力学和系统控制之间的强耦合，这通常导致次优甚至不可行的设计。这个跨学科的研究项目旨在通过测试和验证一种全新的控制协同设计方法来建立一个集成的设计范式，以创建相互有效的PTO和WCS，具有主动机械运动校正（AMMR），嵌套协同优化和先进控制。该计划是一个颠覆性的范式转换，从常见的顺序“设计，然后控制”的方法，以并行的“设计控制”和“控制设计”的方法，整体设计和优化整个WEC设备的几何形状，系统布局，PTO和控制系统，显着提高性能。这项研究将为WEC系统的耦合建模，设计和控制创造基础知识和工具，以推动波浪能转换技术的融合。这项研究将通过多层面的技术和专业技能培训、国际实习、为代表性不足的少数民族和妇女提供机会，和独特的实践经验，为K-该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。

The United Nations has designated the 2020s as the “Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development”. Along the long coastlines of the US, Ireland, and the UK, ocean waves represent a vast, untapped, high-density power source. It has been estimated that wave energy has the potential to supply at least one third of US electricity demand. In spite of the huge potential of wave energy to provide power, wave energy conversion is still in its infancy worldwide with none of the wave energy converters (WEC) to date achieving widespread acceptance. This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) project will research the fundamental theory and design tools needed to design practical wave energy converter systems in an integrated fashion. It will be completed through interdisciplinary collaboration of five investigators across three countries throughout the co-design process, from early concept design and components innovation to system integration and field validation. The success of the research on wave energy conversion will help mitigate the global energy crisis, combat climate change, relieve environmental concerns, accelerate blue economy development, and benefit society. It will also serve as a demonstration to inspire worldwide collaborations to solve the global crisis of energy sustainability and establish US-European collaborative leadership in the emerging field of the blue economy. For WECs to efficiently convert energy from wave to wire, multidisciplinary research is required, including a wave capture structure (WCS) to capture the oscillating irregular wave energy as mechanical energy, a power take-off (PTO) subsystem to convert mechanical energy into electricity, and advanced control to adapt the device to irregular wave excitations and optimize power capture. Each of these modules takes domain-specific expertise, which is conventionally addressed sequentially by domain experts. Such a sequential design paradigm neglects the strong couplings among WCS hydrodynamics, PTO dynamics, and system control, which generally results in a sub-optimal or even infeasible design. This transdisciplinary research project aims to establish an integrated design paradigm by testing and validating a radically new control co-design approach to create mutually-efficient PTO and WCS, with active mechanical motion rectification (AMMR), nested co-optimization, and advanced control. The program is a disruptive paradigm switch from the common sequential “design and then control” approach to a concurrent “design for control” and “control for design” approach to holistically design and optimize the entire WEC device’s geometry, system layout, PTO, and control system for significantly improved performance. This research will create fundamental knowledge and tools for coupled modelling, design and control of the WEC system to drive the convergence of wave energy conversion technologies. The research will impact the quality and diversity of education at four universities through multidimensional technical and professional skill trainings, international internships, opportunities for underrepresented minorities and women, and unique hands-on experiences for K-12 and community college students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.