Optimal Control of Wave Energy Converters Using Epsilon-Trig Regularization Method

The wave energy converter (WEC) devices provide access to a renewable energy source. Developing control strategies to harvest maximum wave energy requires solving a constrained optimal control problem. It is shown that singular control arcs may constitute part (or the entire) of extremal trajectories. Characterizing the optimal control structure, especially with the possibility of many switches between regular and singular control arcs, is challenging due to lack of a priori information about: 1) optimal sequence as well as number of the regular and singular control arcs, and 2) the corresponding optimal switch times (from a regular to a singular arc and vice versa). This investigation demonstrates the application of a recently developed construct, the Epsilon-Trig Regularization Method (ETRM), to the problem of maximizing energy harvesting for a point-absorber WEC model in the presence of control constraints. Utility of the ETRM for the WEC problem is demonstrated by comparing its high-quality results against those in the literature for a number of test cases.