Overview
Our research explores the development and application of marine energy technologies across a range of scales and environments. The projects highlighted on this page reflect ongoing and completed efforts in device concepts, experimental testing, field deployments, and supporting analyses. Together, they illustrate how we translate research questions into physical systems, measurements, and actionable insights that inform marine energy design, performance, and deployment. The sections below provide additional context on the tools we use, the outputs we generate, and the lessons learned through this work.
Tools
Our research spans the full wave-to-wire lifecycle of marine energy systems and relies on a diverse set of numerical, modeling, design, and data-analysis tools. These include software for hydrodynamics, wave modeling, WEC dynamics, power take-off systems, fluid dynamics, CAD, data acquisition, and geospatial analysis—many of which are listed below. While no single project uses every tool, this collection reflects the interdisciplinary nature of our work and the flexibility required to move between theory, simulation, laboratory testing, and field applications. Across these efforts, we primarily develop and integrate workflows in MATLAB and Python, which form the backbone of our modeling, control, and data-analysis environments. Collaborators and students can expect hands-on engagement with these platforms alongside domain-specific tools as projects evolve.
Hydrodynamics
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Capytaine is a Python package for the simulation of the interaction between water waves and floating bodies in frequency domain.
It is built around a full rewrite of the open source Boundary Element Method (BEM) solver Nemoh for the linear potential flow wave theory.
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Orcina
Power Take-Off
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WEC Dynamics
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DescriptionWEC-Sim (Wave Energy Converter SIMulator) is an open-source software for simulating wave energy converters. The software is developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK using the multi-body dynamics solver Simscape Multibody. WEC-Sim has the ability to model devices that are comprised of bodies, joints, power take-off systems, and mooring systems. WEC-Sim can model both rigid bodies and flexible bodies with generalized body modes. Simulations are performed in the time-domain by solving the governing wave energy converter equations of motion in the 6 Cartesian degrees-of-freedom, plus any number of user-defined modes.
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Orcina
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Water Waves
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DescriptionWEC-Sim (Wave Energy Converter SIMulator) is an open-source software for simulating wave energy converters. The software is developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK using the multi-body dynamics solver Simscape Multibody. WEC-Sim has the ability to model devices that are comprised of bodies, joints, power take-off systems, and mooring systems. WEC-Sim can model both rigid bodies and flexible bodies with generalized body modes. Simulations are performed in the time-domain by solving the governing wave energy converter equations of motion in the 6 Cartesian degrees-of-freedom, plus any number of user-defined modes.
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Fluid Dynamics
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Data Acquisition
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Capytaine is a Python package for the simulation of the interaction between water waves and floating bodies in frequency domain.
It is built around a full rewrite of the open source Boundary Element Method (BEM) solver Nemoh for the linear potential flow wave theory.
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Orcina
GIS
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Orcina
CAD
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Orcina
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Operating Systems
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Orcina
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