The project – funded by a grant from the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) together with contributions from existing shareholders – has now commenced and will run in parallel with a longer term physical and mathematical modeling research programme currently being conducted in the Department of Engineering at the University of Southampton, UK.
The main project focus will be on the internal configuration of the device in order to maximise performance and efficiency, but will also consider mooring, survivability and fatigue through a hydrodynamics programme involving comprehensive CFD modelling and a series of Tank tests in a selected Wave Basin.
On completion, OWEL will have an optimised full scale design for the Grampus platform, and a more detailed understanding of its performance and cost characteristics. Importantly, the project will have investigated the technical fatigue and survivability of the technology and considered production and manufacturing methods and approaches.
