Collaborative Research: EAGER: CET: Harnessing Offshore Renewable Energy from High-Intensity Focused Ocean Waves Using 3D Printed Undulating Porous Structures.

This EAGER project was submitted under DCL 23-109 for Clean Energy Technology topics under a NSF Clean Energy Technology Initiative. Renewable energy from ocean waves can provide about 10% of world electricity, reducing more than 3% of global CO2 production. In the United States, around 70% of the population lives along coastlines, a good wave energy resource, with limited access to other renewable energy.

This research will bring together a highly collaborative and synergistic team of architects, mechanical engineers, and materials scientists to address the fundamental challenge in adopting the existing offshore renewable energy technologies: power can be generated at a competitive cost. This research will exploit a drastically new paradigm of harvesting renewable energy by creating High-Intensity Focused Ocean Waves (HIFOW).

Three dimensional (3D)-printed concrete spatial shell modules will be designed and fabricated to alter the seabed topography, increase biodiversity, and harness ocean wave energy through HIFOW. The outcomes of this work will have positive societal and economic impacts through (i) the use of decarbonized concrete and (ii) the reduction of waste and low-embodied carbon by using lightweight, modular shellular structures capable of resisting extreme conditions.

In addition to generating energy, the strategy used in this research can also be applied to mitigate the impact of rising water due to temperature change along many coastlines worldwide. Printing spatial shell modules made of materials compatible with coral reefs can help revive the reefs. A diverse group of students will be recruited and trained through this work to become future innovators who will develop resilient, sustainable, and equitable systems, technologies, and solutions to meet evolving societal and environmental challenges.

This research connects material science, structural geometry, and additive manufacturing to renewable methods of harnessing and generating energy unique in scale, approach, and results. The design, construction, and deployment of large-scale spatial shell structures that can become a habitable place for marine life and harness wave energy have not been investigated before.

Hence, this research intends to significantly improve wave energy conversion efficiency to electricity and make deploying energy-capturing devices in the ocean more effective. The performance and uses of the shell-based geometries in conjunction with fluid dynamic forces of waves in extreme conditions will open a new research horizon in designing efficient structures for extreme conditions.

Using quarry-based products to make resilient material compatible with seawater will contribute to material science and construction by recycling and reusing natural materials. The ocean is a harsh environment with very complicated and highly nonlinear mathematics. The scale of any ocean wave energy prototype is immense, making conducting laboratory and field tests challenging.

Hence, this research offers a drastically different approach by focusing on power generation using a single wave energy capturing (WEC) device. Potentially, this research will (1) significantly improve the efficiency of wave energy conversion to electricity, (2) vastly reduce the number, size, cost, and deployment area of WEC devices in the ocean, (3) leave more space for ocean activities, and (4) reduce interruption of marine lives and ecosystem.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.