EPSRC Themes: Coastal and waterway engineering ; Marine wave and tidal ; Water engineering ; Continuum mechanics ; Fluid dynamics and aerodynamics ; Numerical analysis ; Structural Engineering; Wind Power; Complex Fluids & Rheology.

It is envisioned that marine renewable energy could play an important role in electricity generation and will help to meet the UK government's policy for an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. The potential opportunities have led to considerable effort in the development and deployment of marine renewable energy devices, such as offshore wind turbines as well as wave and tidal stream technologies. Therefore, simulation tools that allow the simulation of the entire structure's behaviour under wave and current loads are needed to assess the safety, survivability and viability for marine energy converter devices and offshore structures, and their environmental impacts on ecosystems and sediment systems.

The main aim of the project is to quantify the structural response of a offshore floating structure and offshore pile-supported foundation subjected to various wave loads and a strong tidal current under extreme events. Numerical simulations will be carried out and compared with experimental measurements, which will reveal with great details the fluid-structure interaction of the floating offshore energy device and impact force exerting on pile-structures subjected to waves and currents. In addition, the developed fully coupled fluid-structure interaction simulation tool can also be used in many other engineering applications, such as in biomedical engineering to study blood flow in movable and deformable on geometries based on medical imaging.