The design of a mooring system for a floating structure is a significant challenge; the choice of line structure and layout determine highly non-linear hydrodynamic behaviors that, in turn, influence the dynamics of the whole system. The difficulty is particularly acute for Self-Reacting Point Absorber Wave Energy Converters (SRPA WEC) as these machines rely on their movements to extract useful power from wave motions and the mooring must constrain the SRPA WEC motion without detracting from power production. In this thesis this topic has been addressed in an innovative way and new ideas on how these devices should be moored were investigated. As part of the study, an optimization routine was implemented to investigate the optimal mooring design and its characteristics. In this process, different challenges were faced. To evaluate the different mooring configurations, a high fidelity representation of the system hydrodynamics is necessary which captures the non-linearities of the system. Unfortunately, high-fidelity modeling tends to be very computationally expensive, and for this reason previous studies based mooring design largely relies on simplified representations that only reflect part of the mooring design space since some physical and hydrodynamic properties are dropped. In this work, we present how a full hydrodynamic time domain simulation can be utilized within a Metamodel-Based Optimization to better evaluate a wider range of mooring configurations spanning the breadth of the full design space. The method uses a Metamodel, defined in terms of the mooring physical parameters, to cover the majority of the optimization process a high fidelity model is used to establish the Metamodel in a pre-processing stage. The method was applied to a case study of a two-body heaving SRPA WEC. Survivability constrains where introduce into the model using a new statistical approach which reduces the execution time, and allowed the optimization routine. The analysis results lead to the conclusion that for SRPA WEC the mooring loads have a significant impact on how the body reacts with the waves, affecting both the energy that enter the system as well as the energy that is extracted as power. This implies that, in some cases, the mooring lines need to be considered in early stages of the designs as opposed to an afterthought, as is typically done. Results indicate that an optimal mooring design can result in a 26% increase in total annual power production. In addition, the mooring lines impact on mitigating parasitic pitch and roll were analyzed. It was established that in regular waves, the mooring lines can reduce the parametric excitations and improve the power extraction up to 56% for a particular sea state. By applying a computationally efficient iterative design approach to a device's mooring, parasitic motions and suboptimal device operation can be reduced, ultimately making WECs a more competitive source of energy. / Graduate / 0346 / 0537 / 0548 / 0547 / jortiz@uvic.ca

The widely-used passenger and car ferries, sailing regularly and carrying heavy loads, form a unique type of marine vessel, providing vital transportation links to the coastal regions. Modern ferry ships usually are equipped with multiple diesel engines as prime movers. These diesel engines consume a large amount of marine diesel fuel with high fuel costs, and high emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) and other harmful air pollutants, including CO2, HC, NOx, SO2, CO, and PM. To reduce fuel costs and the harmful emissions, the marine industry and ferry service providers have been seeking clean ship propulsion solutions. In this work, the model-based design (MBD) and optimization methodology for developing advanced electrified vehicles (EV) are applied to the modelling, design and control optimizations of clean marine vessels with a hybrid electric propulsion system. The research focuses on the design and optimization of the hybrid electric ship propulsion system and uses an open deck passenger and car ferry, the MV Tachek, operated by the British Columbia Ferry Services Inc. Canada, as a test case. At present, the ferry runs on the Quadra Island – Cortes Island route in British Columbia, Canada, with dynamically changing ocean conditions in different seasons over a year. The research first introduces the ship operation profile, using statistical ferry operation data collected from the ferry’s voyage data recorder and a data acquisition system that is specially designed and installed in this research. The ship operation profile model with ship power demand, travelling velocity and sailing route then serves as the design and control requirements of the hybrid electric marine propulsion system. The development of optimal power control and energy management strategies and the optimization of the powertrain architecture and key powertrain component sizes of the ship propulsion system are then carried out. Both of the series and parallel hybrid electric propulsion architectures have been studied. The sizes of crucial powertrain components, including the diesel engine and battery energy storage system (ESS), are optimized to achieve the best system energy efficiency. The optimal power control and energy management strategies are optimized using dynamic programming (DP) over a complete ferry sailing trip. The predicted energy efficiency and emission reduction improvements of the proposed new ship with the optimized hybrid propulsion system are compared with those of two benchmark vessels to demonstrate the benefits of the new design methodology and the optimized hybrid electric ship propulsion system design. These two benchmarks include a conventional ferry with the old diesel-mechanical propulsion system, and the Power Take In (PTI) hybrid electric propulsion systems installed on the MV Tachek at present. The simulation results using the integrated ship propulsion system model showed that the newly proposed hybrid electric ship could have 17.41% fuel saving over the conventional diesel-mechanical ship, and 22.98% fuel saving over the present MV Tachek. The proposed optimized hybrid electric propulsion system, combining the advantages of diesel-electric, pure electric, and mechanical propulsions, presented considerably improved energy efficiency and emissions reduction. The research forms the foundation for future hybrid electric ferry design and development. / Graduate

The diploma thesis is focused on create an optimization methodology for CFD issues or any other computationally demanding software. Optimization method is applied on simplified model of car, where improves its aerodynamic properties