Water-waves focusing by an elliptical reflector

Focusing water waves is a potential technology improving the power generation of wave energy converters. Two semi-ellipsoidal reflectors, including long-axis opening and short-axis opening, were adopted to investigate the water-wave focusing effects. A 3D numerical wave tank was built and solved using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. First, the wave fields around the reflectors against different wave periods were calculated. Furthermore, the wave elevation at monitoring locations of the reflectors against different wave steepness was investigated. Results demonstrate that the number of focusing points of the long-axis opening is more than that of the short-axis opening for short wave periods. The locations of focusing points move with the change of wave periods. However, for long wave periods, the waves can be focused over a large area in front of the reflector. The wave height at the focusing area overall becomes smaller with the increase in the wave periods. Additionally, the wave steepness has insignificant effects on the dimensionless wave height.