Wesley L'Italien

Oscillating Buoy

In a class project geared towards renewable energy, I looked at the opportunities of using the ocean’s natural currents to harvest energy. I utilized the Morison Equation to view the natural frequency response of a spherical buoy oscillating in a wavy, ocean-like environment. Iterating over certain parameters like buoy radius and mass showed a wide spectrum of design choices for different wavy situations. I then employed the ODE45 simulation function built into MATLAB coupled with a Fast Fourier Transform to visualize the buoy’s frequency peaks when it is forced by a wave with a frequency of 1Hz. This helped to validate the chosen design parameters.