Structural Materials and Manufacturing Processes

The Advance Concrete Engineering – WEC project is designed to yield step reductions in the added manufacturing costs of concrete WEC structures by examining optimised designs using a combination of established and novel concrete fabrication techniques.

The CREATE project aims to confirm that the use of concrete technology can make a step change in LCoE in the wave energy sector, taking a broad approach to identify where structural concrete could have most impact, before developing a suitable design solution in detail.

The RotoHybrid project aims to develop the materials and processing technology necessary to enable the versatile, lightweight polymer manufacturing process of rotational moulding to be employed in the design of novel wave energy converters.

This targeted project assessed the potential application of new and existing rotational moulding technologies including hybrid rotationally moulded structures with concrete ballast material and innovative new design concepts for accepting point loads and preventing buckling.

There is potential to reduce the cost of wave energy through use of deformable fabric/elastomeric structures for wave energy conversion. Deformable bodies can have several advantages over their conventional rigid counterparts.

The ARMOR project investigated patented rotational moulding composites (from strength enhancing carbon and graphene nano additives to unique anti-fouling composites and integrated ‘health monitoring’ self-sensing polymers) for use in WEC construction.

The rotational moulding process offers a range of crucial benefits to WEC designers that could initiate a step-change impact in LCoE. This targeted project assessed the potential application of new and existing technologies to overcome these hurdles.

CorPower, Balmoral and Wave Venture combined their efforts to assess the viability of hybrid Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) applied to the specific case of a prime mover of point absorber Wave Energy Converters (WEC).

The RePOWER (Reinforced Polymers for Wave EneRgy) consortium assessed the use of reinforced polymers as the prime mover of point absorber wave energy converters (WECs).

The project encompassed two areas TTI sees as being key to the path towards cost competitive wave energy – impermeable fabrics to provide compliant and thus load shedding/peak load resistant buoyant modules and fibre rope ‘load nets’ to encapsulate the buoyant modules.