Dynamic behavior and damage analysis of a spar-type floating offshore wind turbine under ship collision

Abstract

This paper investigated the dynamic responses and the incurred structural damage of a 5 MW spar-type floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) and a ship when they collide. Ansys/LS-DYNA was used to establish the finite element models (FEMs) of the FOWT and the ship and to subsequently conduct the collision analysis. The global dynamics of the FOWT are captured well by the FEM comparing with FAST code and a simplified 8-degree of freedom (8-DOF) model established in MATLAB. The validity of the ship FEM was guaranteed by the fact that the model outputs agree well with empirical formulas. A series of simulations were then carried out using the FEMs to analyze the impact forces, displacements, accelerations, damages and energy dissipation during the ship collision for various impact velocities. The results show that the peak collision force, peak spar platform displacement and peak tower top displacement increase almost linearly with the initial velocity of the ship. The maximum tower top acceleration during the collision consistently exceeds 0.2 g, severely affecting the normal operation of the FOWT. The collision causes dents on the spar platform rather than the collapse of the whole wind turbine. After the collision, the initial kinetic energy of the ship is mainly transformed into the plastic deformation energy of the FOWT and the energy dissipated in the water. In addition, assuming a rigid ship bow results in accurate FOWT dynamic responses but fails to provide a good evaluation of the spar platform deformation.