Experimental Analysis of Slamming Load Characteristics for Truss Structures in Offshore Wind Applications

Abstract

For offshore wind structures located in shallow water, slamming loads resulting from plunging breaking waves are important for the fatigue assessment during the design. This study investigates the slamming loads on the bracings of a truss structure, based on the analyses of the local force data measured in a 1:8 scale experiment. A hammer test analysis is conducted to check the properties of the structure. A wave test analysis is carried out to estimate the slamming loads. An optimization-based deconvolution (ODC) method, which uses the linearity of the structure, is proposed for the estimation. The optimal values of eight parameters representing the slamming loads are obtained. This local force model demonstrates an astonishingly good reconstruction of the experimental results, given the simplicity of the approach.