Type synthesis of parallel mechanisms capturing wave energy

Abstract

Wave energy is clean, renewable, and abundant, awaiting exploitation. A wide range of wave energy converters have been proposed so far. Oscillating body systems are an important class of wave energy converters. Many mechanisms have been invented to absorb the random wave energy. Nowadays, there is a lack of method to design the mechanism for oscillating body systems to extract the wave energy. Parallel mechanism has the advantages of high stiffness and high load, which are suitable for design of the mechanism for wave energy converters. In this paper, a procedural method based on the generalized function ( G F) sets theory is proposed to design parallel mechanisms to capture wave energy. Using this method, numerous parallel mechanisms have been obtained, which provides the foundation of the development of wave energy converters.