An Improved Direct Forcing Immersed Boundary Method With Integrated Mooring Algorithm for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

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Abstract An upgraded direct forcing immersed boundary method is implemented in the open-source hydrodynamic framework REEF3D::CFD for simulating the six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) motions of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) based on the OC5 semi-submersible design. The direct forcing method is enhanced with a new density interpolation method across the fluid-structure interface that removes unphysical spurious phenomena and ensures stable and accurate wave load calculations on floating objects. A quasi-static algorithm is used for modeling the mooring system of the OC5 platform and restraining its motions in waves. The Navier-Stokes equations are solved on a staggered structured rectilinear grid for the hydrodynamic simulations. The level-set method is used to capture the free surface of the ocean waves. A ray-casting algorithm is employed to get inside-outside information near the fluid-solid interface while maintaining the underlying Cartesian grid in the hydrodynamic domain. The performance and accuracy of the mooring algorithm are compared to the widely-used mooring model MoorDyn, which is coupled to the hydrodynamic solver in REEF3D::CFD. The study demonstrates that the enhanced direct forcing method with the integrated quasi-static mooring algorithm in REEF3D::CFD provides a robust and accurate tool, suitable for the numerical analysis of the state-of-the-art FOWT in ocean waves.