Formation-Restoring Mooring for Deep-Water Energy Converters
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current wave energy devices are constrained to shallow ocean waters and require individual anchoring, which causes damage to the seafloor and wildlife, and is costly and time-consuming for deployment and maintenance. Additionally, there is no system to maintain the formation of buoyant devices in deeper waters where water and wind currents can distort their arrangement.
Innovation Solution
A mooring system that connects buoyant devices to each other with tethers, allowing for dynamic relative tensioning and reducing the need for fixed anchoring. This system uses energy storing mechanisms like buoyancy springs to maintain the relative positions of devices within a farm, allowing for movement with virtually unlimited freedom while maintaining positional stability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If buoyant devices are individually anchored to the seafloor, then they can be kept at a stationary position, but this causes damage to the seafloor and wildlife, and increases deployment and maintenance costs
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple buoyant devices are merged into a connected formation where they share common anchoring points. The devices are linked together through tethers that allow relative movement while maintaining formation integrity, enabling the entire array to drift together rather than each device being independently anchored to the seafloor.
Solution Approach 2:
The anchoring system transitions from static individual anchors to dynamic shared anchors with tensioning mechanisms. The tethers connecting devices allow dynamic adjustment of tensions based on relative positions, enabling the formation to drift while maintaining stability through active tension management rather than fixed positioning.
2Stability of the object's composition
If buoyant devices are individually anchored, then they maintain fixed positions, but deployment and maintenance become expensive and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple devices share common anchoring infrastructure, reducing the total number of anchors and attachment points required. This merging of anchoring resources across the formation significantly reduces deployment time and maintenance efforts compared to individual anchoring of each device.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared anchors and tensioning mechanisms serve multiple devices simultaneously, making the anchoring system multi-functional. A single anchor point supports and stabilizes multiple buoyant devices through the tether network, reducing the overall complexity and time required for system deployment and maintenance.
3Device complexity
If buoyant devices drift freely in formation, then anchoring costs are reduced, but water and wind currents distort the formation and reduce effectiveness
Solution Approach 1:
The tensioning mechanisms in the tethers dynamically adjust tensions based on the relative positions of connected devices. When currents or wind distort the formation, the tensioning systems actively respond by adjusting forces to restore devices to their proper positions, maintaining formation integrity without requiring complex fixed anchoring structures.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates feedback through tension sensors and position monitoring that detect deviations from the desired formation. This feedback drives the tensioning mechanisms to apply corrective forces, continuously restoring the formation to its intended configuration despite external disturbances from currents and wind.
4Stability of the object's composition
If more anchors are used to maintain formation stability, then formation integrity is improved, but cost and deployment complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple devices share common anchor points through the tether network, reducing the total number of anchors required compared to individual anchoring. The shared anchoring infrastructure maintains formation stability while minimizing the number of anchor-deployment operations needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The dynamic tensioning mechanisms allow fewer anchors to effectively stabilize more devices by actively managing forces in the tether network. The system compensates for reduced anchor数量 through active tension control that maintains formation stability without requiring additional anchor points.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system reduces the cost and complexity of wave energy device deployments by minimizing the number of anchors required, enabling operations in deeper waters, and maintaining the stability and formation of buoyant devices despite water and wind currents.
Implementation Method 1
The tensioning mechanism includes a buoyancy spring, which, when extended, stores energy in the form of a vertically-displaced element and releases the stored energy to contract and pull the buoyant devices closer together
Implementation Method 2
stores energy in the form of a vertically-displaced element and releases the stored energy
Data Source
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AI summary
A system that maintains the relative and/or absolute geographical positions of two or more buoyant devices floating in a body of water. A plurality of formation restoring tethers are disclosed which permit the unrestricted vertical movement of networked buoyant devices, while resisting increases in their lateral separations by providing restoring forces to oppose such separations. Tensioning mechanisms incorporated into the tethers generate the resistance to the lateral separations of two or more entities by transforming such separations into an increase in the potential energy stored within such tensioning mechanisms, the potential energy of which is released in the process of restoring the original separations and/or positions of the displaced buoyant devices.