DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15188315
title: Wave basin testing of hydrodynamic interactions in centralized controlled wave energy converter arrays for irregular short- and long-crested waves

description: The presented dataset covers the experimental modelling of a single ‘WECfarm’ heaving point absorber wave energy converter (WEC), and WEC arrays consisting of two, three, four and five WECfarm WECs, tested at the Coastal & Ocean Basin (COB) in Ostend, Belgium. Test conditions include irregular long- and short-crested waves.

The dataset is linked to the following article, which covers the description:

Vervaet, T., Cromheeke, L., Quartier, N., Streicher, M., Stratigaki, V., Troch, P., 2025.Wave basin testing of hydrodynamic interactions in centralized controlled wave energy converter arrays for irregular short- and long-crested waves.Applied Ocean Research 156, 104467.URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141118725000550  doi :https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apor.2025.104467

The dataset is available as a single compressed file 'WECfarm_COB.zip'. There are three setups (each corresponding to a certain number of WECs as described in the corresponding article). For each of these setups three folders are set up containing the data. These folders are:

The 01_𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘_𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 folder contains the .mat files corresponding to each test. The name of the .mat file starts with the unique test identification number 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡_𝐼𝐷, followed by additional test type related descriptive info, and the start time of the test in the format year–month–day–hour–minutes–seconds, as retrieved from the Speedgoat target machine. The .mat file can be opened in MATLAB, or alternatively analysed in other tools such as Simulink Data Inspector, Python, or Maple. Within the .mat file structure, the logged signals can be retrieved as timeseries with a timestep of 0.001 s, by using their unique MATLAB assigned index. The signal name starts with a reference to WEC A, WEC B, WEC C, WEC D or WEC E, followed by a numbering and a description of the signal.Note: this folder is not available for setup 1, as setup 1 covers the wave characterization tests without the WECs and henceforth, no WEC data is available.

The 02_𝑉𝑇𝐼_𝑊𝑎𝑣𝑒𝐺𝑎𝑢𝑔𝑒𝑠_𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 folder contains separate folders for all tests. The folder name consists of the 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡_𝐼𝐷, the name of the WECs used in that test, a descriptor of the type of test and a reference to the wave condition. In this folder, the VTI wave gauges output files from the FlexLogger software are included. These files contain the measured surface elevations for the various wave gauges installed in and around the array. Both the direct FlexLogger output (.tdms) and a .csv file are available, both containing the same wave gauge data in a different file format. Note that wave gauge data is logged at 40Hz.

The 03_𝑊𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑟_𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 folder contains one subfolder per wave condition. Each of these folders contains the input and output files used by the COB wavemaker software to generate the wave conditions. These include the input time series for wave generation and the measured signals of the generated surface elevations and wavemaker paddle motion. For instance, for wave condition JS1_90, the wave paddle motion as computed by the wave generation software can be found in the JS1_90.dat and JS1_90.ini files. The logged wave paddle motion is contained in JS1_90_disklogger_cc1.dat and JS1_90_disklogger_cc2.dat for the wave paddles along the X- and Y- axes of the wave basin respectively. Please refer to Figure 6 in the corresponding journal article for reference to the wave basin coordinate system.