Enhancing Floating Breakwater and Wave Energy Converter Performance Using Local Resonators

This paper presents a floating membrane equipped with local resonators as a dualfunction system for wave energy harvesting and wave attenuation. Conventional floating breakwaters need to be very long to interact with long, low-frequency ocean waves, where most of the ocean’s energy is concentrated. This concept uses a resonator to achieve the same effect, thereby, removing the need for a long floating breakwater. A coupled membrane–fluid–resonator model is developed to study the effect of the resonators on the wet natural frequencies, modal interaction, and wave reflection/transmission. The results show that properly tuned resonators can increase energy absorption at low frequencies while simultaneously reducing transmitted wave amplitude. The proposed system demonstrates how locally resonant concepts can be translated to hydroelastic structures to combine coastal protection and renewable energy harvesting within a single platform.