Benchmarking OpenFAST, WEC-Sim, and SEA-Stack for the TALOS Wave Energy Converter

The advancement of wave energy converters (WECs) requires resolving their dynamics and underlying flow. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydropower Technologies Office (H2O) has developed engineering-fidelity tools such as WEC-SIM and SEA-Stack that resolve physics for calculating WEC dynamics and performance. Given the variety of WEC archetypes, the development of these tools has prioritized the support of configuration flexibility over enhanced hydrodynamics and fluid-structure interaction. Historically wind energy-centric engineering-fidelity tools - specifically, the OpenFAST tool developed by the U.S. DOE Integrated Energy Systems Office (IESO) - have unique functionality and high-order effects that can be adopted and applied to WEC analysis to address these limitations. This work presents a benchmark between OpenFAST, WEC-Sim, and SEA-Stack for a representative WEC named TALOS (Technology Advanced Learning Ocean System). The presentation will summarize the TALOS WEC properties, model setups, code-to-code benchmark results, quantitative and qualitative results showcasing the unique capabilities of each tool, and benchmark conclusions. The tool development advancements informed by the benchmark that are now underway will also be summarized.