Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Nonlinear Ocean Energy Harvester, Dane Sequeira

Link Foundation Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation Fellowship Reports

The scientific community has worked to extend communication networks, human safety programs, and environmental monitoring systems across continents, but has struggled to accomplish these same goals beyond the shoreline. Lack of offshore power is the greatest barrier restricting us from exploring the ocean because it is difficult to operate sensors without a reliable power source. Wave energy harvesting has been investigated as a solution; however, current methods have many shortcomings. Traditional ocean energy harvesters (e.g. buoys) extract energy from ocean waves by capturing the change in potential energy as the buoy travels vertically along the wave. A linear design, this …