Comparison of fully nonlinear and weakly nonlinear potential flow solvers for the study of wave energy converters undergoing large amplitude motions

We present a comparison between two distinct numerical codes dedicated to the study of wave energy converters. Both are developed by the authors, using a boundary element method with linear triangular elements. One model applies fully nonlinear boundary conditions in a numerical wavetank environnment (and thus referred later as NWT), whereas the second relies on a weak-scatterer approach in open-domain and can be considered a weakly nonlinear potential code (referred later as WSC). For the purposes of comparison, we limit our study to the forces on a heaving submerged sphere. Additional results for more realistic problem geometries will be presented at the conference.