More than 2100 years ago, the city of Petra in Jordan survived a dry climate. The inhabitants found solutions to water scarcity without scientific instruments or CAD. Water from natural springs and rainwater was captured into an ingenious system of canals, pipelines, dams and reservoirs to provide daily enough water throughout the years. This proves that successful problem solving is of all times, and in earlier centuries depended largely on good landscape observations and the will to plan the right actions.
An amazing amount of technical standards, teaching materials and businesses have been created by passionate people. The resulting global acceleration of industrialization now presents the world with unforeseen challenges. But there is a natural order in dependency of progress. Therefore, with pioneering spirit, nations must make thoughtful decisions that reflect nature's way by thrift, symbiosis and diversity.
List all physical laws and indirect (external, technical, human) influences acting on a phenomenon.
Always look behind the reason, find the root cause and even the first origin of a deviation or an anomaly.
Forward thinking: translate values of the parameters one by one to the desired effect.
Developing requires visualisation and sustained thinking with openness to continuous enhancement.
In this way imagination can unfold from early inspiration along with searching for possible obstacles and combining laws of nature to resolve apparent contradictions or relevant objections until a workable design emerges. In other words, be critical of partial solutions, place them in thought in the external reality.
It is my experience that after inspiration better solutions emerge when the adjacent processes or interacting natural laws of undesirable phenomena are brought together. It is not the direct relationship that produces a solution, but the dissection to the underlying reason for the causes of a drawback.
By understanding the origin, insight is gained into the structure that a solution must have. From those details, unraveling the obstacles is a sequence of logic and a puzzling with the broadest possible knowledge.
Upon awakening with a solution or a problem that was overlooked, this process took place in the unconscious mind and you notice that many aspects fall into place or wrangle.
Fill the gap: once waste was rubbish, now it is resource.
Explode the system being studied and its associated environment and place these individual parameters in a (different) environment related to one of these parameters.
The more ready knowledge you have about physics and chemistry and technics the more combinations you will be able to visualise.
If a combination seems worthwile, but do not unleash a permanent solution, exame why or what lacks to meet your aspiration. Add an other physical laws that makes the first one effective.
Collect the disadvantages and the applicable laws of nature and make the following trade-offs: Prevent (stop), Change (modify), Avoid (work around it), Merge (associate). In Dutch: De Vier Vragen: verzamel de nadelen en de toepasselijke natuurwetten en maak de volgende afwegingen: Voorkom (stop), Verander (wijzig), Vermijd (werk eromheen), Voeg samen (associeer).
Invent + Think toward the objective. Their is always a way, dis-cover influencing principes and enabling parameters values. Do not stop.
--> Our starting point is that a thorough analysis is half the solution;
--> A second guiding principle is symbiosis: 'don't take everything';
--> A third principle is: don't idealize!: 'let the real world shape your inspiration until you reach the goal of your idea'.
--> In an iterative way against risks of the real circumstances and the pain points of upscaling.
--> Across all concepts, attemp to exploit optimally all natural laws in vigour in the entire system, not just in one partial application.
--> MiniMax the drawbacks and the benefits in view of the final objective on the long term.
Publications of report Knowledge Capture related to ocean wave energy.
Wave Energy ScotlandThis was my favorite in 2008 When I retired in 2020, I looked up for the status but the project turned out to be a failure.
Pelamis Wave Energy Converter - WikipediaThe principle of a bellows and reverse without direct contact of moving parts with (salt) water.
Wedusea.euLatest successfull trials were in 2017 and 2018, for upscaling in 2020-2021. No newer annoucement found on internet.
EMEC - LaminariaIt started very promissing, the latest news I found date from 2012. A scientific study about a hybrid form was published in june 2023 at Elsevier.
Unlimitec Clean EnergyTrials in 2021 confirmed the high efficiency under standarized conditions.
High efficiencyA pleasure to browse in smart and creative ideas and be informed of up-to-date project news.
Change.inc/golfenergieSince 2006 (year of my first proposal), many smart and promising concepts for extracting wave / tidal energy have been turned into simulations and tested in real setups. However, in 2020 there were not yet too many economic profitability in the real 'field'. That was a trigger to broaden my initial idea.
--> the functional trials = does an installation / operating system do, what it should do;
--> the safety verification = does an installation/operating system not do, what it should not do;
--> the loss range = incidents that involve a loss (yield / damage) and whether we accept this or not.
--> describe the deviation in details;
--> disclose the cause of that deviation;
--> discover the reason of that cause;
--> descend to the origin of that reason;
--> the energy delta = the surplus of energy delivered minus ∑E(from mining to end of live);
--> the gain range = the kinetic energy content of the source minus the extracted energy;
--> the omnipresence = the more broadly applicable a concept is, the greater its ROI.
This thought exercises were applied to the functions to be performed, to the components and to real-world conditions. The resulting insights were as much as I can incorporated into Sea-wiggle.R, not all are revealed.
It shows in part the technical contextual and iterative design process to which I subject myself.
From wind (+rain) to wave:
Windfront and windspeed:
The nature of ocean waves:
The transversal and longitudinal movement results in watermolecules making a circular displacement above and below waterlevel.
Potential and kinetic energy: Conservation of mass and energy
Interaction with ocean bottom profile
Interaction with waves from elsewhere
Inventing + Thinking: Complimentarity - See our approach
Predicting yield: flexibility, material use, time to market
Search for drawback and find solutions or workaround or adapt
Scientific principle used. The merits: Technic and Yield
Publications of report Knowledge Capture related to ocean wave energy.
Wave Energy ScotlandDue to underwater currents and storms:
In the Atlantic and Pacific oceans:
effectiveness of counteractions:
Types of shipping vessels:
Tankers and containers, Passenger cruises, Fishing boats, Private yachts, Naval and research ships
Effects of bow and stern waves
Ideas about preventing collisions
Monitoring geotagging
Holding a fleet together