Control Co-design of Linear and Nonlinear Wave Energy Converters

This work presents the control co-design of a linear cylindrical and a spherical single-body wave energy converter (WEC). By control co-design, the goal is to concurrently design an energy-maximizing controller with the device. The nonlinear Froude-Krylov (FK) forces resulting from the changing cross-sectional area of the floater at the water surface are leveraged to improve the performance of the spherical device. Linear and nonlinear damping control formulations were presented with their coefficients as optimization variables. This work does not seek to compare the performance of the linear and nonlinear devices; rather, it presents a formulation for the control co-design of these systems.