The increasing demand for renewable energy sources has motivated the development of novel wave energy conversion concepts.
One such concept is the WaveHexapod, a wave energy converter in which multiple robotic arms interact with floating buoys to harvest energy from ocean waves.
Due to the complexity of the coupled mechanical, hydrodynamic, and control interactions, manual calculations alone are insufficient to assess system behaviour, mechanical feasibility, and energy harvesting performance.
The objective of this work is to develop a modelling and simulation approach to support the analysis and further design of the WaveHexapod system.
To this end, a port-based bond graph model of the WaveHexapod and its environment was developed and implemented in 20-sim.
The model captures the coupled dynamics of the robotic arms, platform, buoys, and wave excitation, and is accompanied by a three-dimensional visualisation to support qualitative analysis.
Based on the developed model, control strategies for energy harvesting and joint saturation prevention were designed and evaluated.
Regenerative damping was employed to harvest energy from wave-induced motion, while an additional control law was introduced to mitigate joint limit violations.
A series of simulation experiments was performed to assess system behaviour, controller performance, mechanical constraints, and energy generation under different parameter settings.
The results show that the proposed control approach is capable of harvesting energy and inducing periodic steady-state behaviour under reduced-scale conditions.
However, the simulations also reveal significant challenges related to mechanical feasibility, joint saturation, and sensitivity to modelling assumptions.
These findings indicate that while the WaveHexapod concept exhibits promising dynamic energy harvesting behaviour, substantial design and control challenges remain.
Overall, the modelling and simulation developed in this work represent a first step toward systematic analysis of the WaveHexapod and form a basis for future design refinement and experimental validation.