This is a past event.

ME-EM Graduate Seminar Speaker Series

proudly presents

John Ringwood, PhD

Professor, Electrical Engineering
Maynooth University, Ireland

Abstract

Since the initial designs for wave energy systems emerged over a century ago, there has been an ongoing attempt to design the ‘best’ wave energy converter (WEC). Even within the diverse set of basic waves harvesting principles, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the ‘optimal’ device, with optimization techniques being variously employed to arrive at the ‘best’ device for a given wave climate. However, there is a strong interaction between the optimal device/array characteristics and the control method employed, with the ‘optimal’ WEC highly dependent on the control method employed. This talk explores such interactions within a control co-design framework, focusing on device geometry, array layout, and power take-off characteristics. The talk explores number of control co-design issues, including appropriate model fidelity, performance function specification, and optimization techniques.

Bio

John Ringwood received the Honors Diploma in Electrical Engineering from TU Dublin, the BSc (Eng) in electrical engineering from Trinity College Dublin (both in 1981), and the PhD in control systems from Strathclyde University (1984). He subsequently received an MA in music technology from Maynooth University in 2005. He spent 15 years in Dublin City University as a member of academic staff in the School of Electronic Engineering, with concurrent terms as a visiting academic in Massey University and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He joined Maynooth University in 2000, as chair professor and founding head of the Dept. of Electronic Engineering and built the Dept. from a greenfield site, also serving as Dean of Engineering from 2001 to 2006. He is currently Professor of Electronic Engineering and Director of the Centre for Ocean Energy Research at Maynooth University.

He is Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Sustainable Energy and the Journal of Ocean Engineering and Marine Energy, and Deputy Subject Editor for IET RPG. John received the 2016 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award, was awarded Chevalier des Palmes Academiques by the French Government in 2017 for his contribution to ocean energy research, and the Doctoral Supervision Award from Maynooth University in 2019. In addition to over 400 peer-reviewed publications, he is co-author of the book Hydrodynamic Control of Wave Energy Devices (with Umesh Korde) and holds 3 patents. His commercialization activities, which include the spin-out company Wave Venture, has been recognized by Enterprise Ireland (2008 Industrial Technologies Commercialization Award) and Maynooth University (2013 Commercialisation Award). His research interests are in control systems, ocean and renewable energy, and biomedical engineering.

Invited by: Shangyan Zou