Abstract
Offshore wind turbines are becoming more common due to the scarcity of suitable land sites. By going offshore, maintenance costs become one of the driving expenses. Hence more reliable components should be implemented on offshore wind turbines. The down-wind rotor configuration does not require as powerful yaw drive as the upwind rotor configuration to align with the wind direction. Thus the yaw system can be simpler with fewer components that can fail and require maintenance. This paper presents numeric simulation studies of how the tower shadow impacts the blades when they pass through the wake behind the tower. The work concentrates on bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines designed for the specifications of the NREL offshore 5-MW baseline wind turbine. The blade response has been compared for a full truss tower and a conventional tubular tower to show how the different tower shadows influence the blades. The blades on the more transparent truss tower experience less root flapwise moment fluctuations due to the weaker tower shadow. The simulations were performed by means of GH Bladed, version 3.82.
Published Version
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