Among the models available to describe the interaction of ocean waves with floating bodies, the linear potential flow theory is one of the simplest and most widespread. The fluid flow is described by a Laplace problem with linear boundary conditions which can be solved using the Boundary Elements Method. The code Nemoh is the only open source solver for this problem, among several commercial codes. It has been developed at the École Centrale de Nantes since the 1970s and has been released as open source in 2014. During this talk, the theory behind the code will be presented and its modernization and its optimization will be discussed.
We are interested by the application to marine renewable energy and in particular for the design of Wave Energy Converters (WEC). Its application to two different designs of WEC will be presented: a rigid hinge-barge and a flexible bulging cylinder. The former can be modeled using rigid-body dynamics to estimate the power it could extract from incoming ocean waves. For the latter, the dynamics is more complex and only a upper bound based on its far-field radiation behavior will be discussed.