Quoceant has completed the tank testing of its inflatable hulll technology for wave energy devices at FloWave in Edinburgh, UK.
The enabling technology, being developed by Quoceant for a Wave Energy Scotland project, is investigating and developing large inflatable structures to produce significant hull volume change in wave energy converters.
Quoceant team tested the high volume ‘inflated’, and low volume ‘deflated’ configuration of its Ectaci-Hull technology.
“The key focus of the second set of tests is how the inflated and deflated model constructions differ in their behaviour and performance in the same waves. The initial results are extremely encouraging with the deflated configuration demonstrating much better survivability characteristics. To put it simply, the low volume model moved much less in the large and extreme wave conditions tested,” Quoceant said.
The results and conclusions are going to evaluated by the team from European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) who are conducting Third Party Verification on the tests, Quoceant informed.