New prediction method for reliability analysis of ocean sustainable energy systems

With the aim of overcoming the shortcomings of traditional approaches, in this paper, an exponential Weibull distribution for fitting the significant wave height data is proposed in order to calculate more accurately the sea-state parameter distribution tails and to extrapolate well. This proposal is applied in predicting the probability distribution tails of a measured ocean wave dataset, and its accuracy is clearly demonstrated. The proposal is subsequently utilised in combination with Monte Carlo sampling to form a new environmental contour method for deriving a 50 year contour line based on the aforementioned measured ocean wave dataset. The derived environmental contour line is compared with that predicted by using a traditional contour line approach. Additionally, the engineering significance of using a more reliable environmental contour line, such as the one derived using the proposed new method for predicting the long-term design force values for an ocean sustainable energy system is highlighted. In conclusion, the newly proposed environmental contour method is recommended to be used when predicting the extreme dynamic response values for the safe and successful design of ocean sustainable energy systems.