AbstractsPhysics

Marine renewable energy as a infinite source of energy can be a reliable alternative for fossil fuels particularly in the UK with high potential wave energy in the Britain marine environment. Wide variety of wave energy converters has been developed in last decades and presenting more economical and reliable technologies is also under process. The ‘Anaconda’ a full-rubber Wave Energy Converter (WEC) operates in a completely new way, transferring energy from water waves to bulge waves in a giant water-filled submerged rubber tube, aligned head-to-sea. Initial researches have shown that it offers advantages of low capital and operational costs, because of its extreme simplicity and the unique durability of rubber. Besides the importance of the design process of a wave energy converter, it is very vital to decide about the grouping of the devices in a wave farm. To have an optimum power output from the wave farm and minimum environmental impacts on marine environment and shoreline, it is necessary to evaluate the layout and the configuration of wave farm by laboratorial tests or computer simulations. In this study MIKE 21 as a coastal and marine engineering software was used for modelling a wave farm of Anacondas. Optimum configuration which could result in the highest possible power output from the wave farm is investigated. Results of this study showed considerable decrement in the near-shore wave height after setting up a wave farm of 21 Anacondas about 3km offshore. While some physical characteristics of Anaconda is under investigation yet, assumptions about radiation rates were taken into account and different results for different scenarios were presented. The effect of different offshore incident wave height on the ratio of near-shore wave height decrement also showed that the higher the incident wave height the higher is the impact on shoreline. However the extent and intensity of the impact was constant for various offshore incident wave heights.