SHY is pleased to share a new open-access publication: “On a causal force constraint mechanism for approximate position tracking wave energy control strategies”, by Pedro Fornaro, Eugenio M. Gelos and John V. Ringwood. The paper addresses an important challenge in wave energy control: how to keep PTO control forces within safe physical limits while maintaining effective real-time operation.
The study presents a causal force constraint mechanism for non-optimisation-based control strategies, helping prevent excessive control effort while preserving the practicality of closed-loop reference tracking approaches. The results show that force-aware control design can improve robustness and hardware protection, while also highlighting the trade-off between respecting force limits and maximising energy absorption.
This research is highly relevant to SHY, which is developing a seawater hydraulic PTO and dynamic passive control solutions for wave energy converters, with the aim of improving performance and reducing the levelized cost of energy in realistic operating conditions.
Read the full paper on Zenodo:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18631659