PRR Project

Summary

CENTEC, being a leading research Centre in Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering, has an important component of its research addressing the dynamics of floating bodies, either the traditional ships or any of the varied forms of offshore platforms aiming at oil and gas exploration as well as renewable energies offshore, or other forms of contributing to the development of the Blue Economy, such as aquaculture or other means of promoting the useful use of the offshore space, including for aims related to tourism.While the shapes of ships have become relatively standard with time, the shapes used for the various ocean wave energy converters and the platforms supporting wind turbines or photovoltaic panels are all very different and their development requires the use of model testing to better understand the dynamic behaviour of those structures in waves and to validate the hydrodynamic forces generated, which are governing the dynamic behaviour.The development of model testing of those structures requires experience in converting model requirements into design specifications for manufacturing, instrumenting the experimental set-up, and providing appropriate data acquisition and processing so that reliable data can be produced to validate the numerical models developed. Moreover, it requires the management of multidisciplinary design and research teams at different locations, such as in the workshop and laboratory environments, in Portugal or abroad. These experience and skills have been acquired by CENTEC in recent years in projects dedicated to the development of two hybrid wind-wave offshore floating platform concepts (funded by FCT projects). The aim of these concepts is to control platform motions and provide dynamic stability, which is critical for upscaling wind turbine rated power.The lessons learnt in the first and second project were valuable for planning the design and construction of the third one, which is an ongoing process, expected to improve further with more experimental activities in upcoming projects. Hydrodynamic testing of the first model was performed always abroad  funded by various EU Access to Experimental Facilities projects by our researchers and provided valuable data for validating numerical models. However, the dry and wet testing of the second model still needs to be performed, and CENTEC needs a specialized person to make it possible.Another related area concerns the power take off (PTO) systems that can extract energy from wave energy devices. CENTEC has developed a testing framework for dry testing of oil-hydraulic PTOs, during two FCT-funded projects. The objective is to validate a numerical model of a generic PTO concept that may be adapted to different WECs, and other concepts in the future as well. Despite having the numerical model done, it is needed to go for experimental testing. The experimental facility is available but requires a specialised person to properly use it and take full advantage of the investment made in developing and building it.Therefore, this scope of the experimental work that is required for the proper development of the research in renewable energy offshore, such as wave energy, wind energy and floating photovoltaic, requires one full-time specialist in experimental work, which at present does not exist in CENTEC.Renewable energies offshore are one of the priority areas of CENTEC as the need to increase drastically the production of renewable energy at sea is critical in Europe, and to have a consistent development of this area, the efforts of the various researchers of CENTEC that work in the analysis and design of these systems, need to be complemented by proper experimental work.At present CENTEC does not have any permanent researcher dedicated to the development of the experimentation associated with the dynamics of floating renewable energy devices and thus it is strategic for CENTEC to open a position for a researcher to develop consistent work on Experimentation, involving the following aspects:Developing the experimental set-up and building the model test prototypes, properly instrumenting with the required sensors,Conducting experimental programs in own and third-party facilitiesAnalysing experimental results, comparing with numerical predictions and extracting conclusions on the validity of the experimental and numerical results.The successful candidate needs to demonstrate appropriate research experience in these fields as well as experience in obtaining and leading research projects that can promote the research of CENTEC within these subject areas. Experience in supervising doctoral students is also expected.