Robert van der Wiel

A parabolic reflection wall is located behind a wave farm of heaving point
absorber wave energy converters (WECs) modelled with patches of bottom friction
in the linear wave model PHAROS. The modelling of the wave energy converters is
validated with both numerical WAMIT results on a single WEC and scaled lab test
data of WEC arrays of 25 WECs of the WECwakes project with both long and short
crested wave spectra. The reflection wall increases wave height within the wave
farm in crests and troughs with a factor of up to 2.5 and 0.6 respectively.
Depending on the location of the individual wave energy converters, the reflection
wall increases wave height at the location of the converters with an average of
45% resulting in a significant increase in wave energy available to be converted
by the WEC farm.