This document constitutes Deliverable ‘D2.1 Preliminary Report on Synthesis of Design Knowledge’ of the LiftWEC project. LiftWEC is a collaborative research project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 851885. It is the intention of the project consortium that the LiftWEC project culminates in the identification of one or more promising configurations of a Wave Energy Converter operating through the use of a rotating hydrofoil that generates lift as the primary interaction with the incident waves. This report is intended to provide a preliminary foundation of the knowledge required to undertake the design of LiftWEC configurations in the project.

In this document the design knowledge required in the LiftWEC project is separated into four fundamental design elements: hydrodynamics, structure, power train and marine operations. Each design element is then sub-divided into a number of aspects that are important to the design of LiftWEC, so that each LiftWEC configuration can be classified by the combination of how these design aspects are satisfied. A LiftWEC configuration can be considered unique where it has a different combination of these design aspects from all other configurations.

Having identified the design aspects that are considered relevant to the LiftWEC, the current knowledge available on each design aspect is identified based on previous research and development within wave energy and related renewable energy sources such as offshore wind energy. Where appropriate due to the differences between the LiftWEC concept and other technologies the relevance and veracity of this design knowledge is reviewed. In addition, gaps in the knowledge about the design aspects are identified, providing guidance on where effort is required to support the appropriate design of promising LiftWEC configurations.