A nonlinear numerical simulation approach for the dynamic responses analysis of floating wind turbine under ship impact scenario

Abstract

The increasing installations of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) are exposed to ship collision hazard, which may result in human injuries and economic loss. To investigate the dynamic responses of FOWT under ship-impact scenario, this paper addresses a nonlinear FEM simulation analysis with LS-DYNA code and emphasizes on the fully-coupled hydro-aero effects of FOWT during the collision process. In the numerical simulations, user-defined subroutines in LS-DYNA were developed to model the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic loads. Potential flow theory was employed for the simulation of hydro loads and a simplified aerodynamic model was built for wind thrust force simulation. The coupled methods were verified to be reasonable when considering both local and global responses of FOWT simultaneously. The environmental loads and global motions are found essential for FOWT in ship collision scenarios.