When designing a wave power plant, reliable and fast simulation tools are required. Computational fluid dynamics(CFD) software provides high accuracy but with a very high computational cost, and in operational, moderate sea states, linear potential flow theories may be sufficient to model the hydrodynamics. In this paper, a model is built in COMSOL Multiphysics to solve for the hydrodynamic parameters of a point-absorbing wave energy device. The results are compared with a linear model where the hydrodynamical parameters are computed using WAMIT, and to experimental results from the Lysekil research site. The agreement with experimental data is good for both numerical models.
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