Experimental study on dynamic response of a floating offshore wind turbine under various freak wave profiles

Abstract

This study performed experimental investigation on the dynamic response of an in-place floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) under freak wave actions. Based on the method of wave profile modulation, various freak wave profiles embedded in unidirectional Gaussian seas were generated in wave basin and the action of these waves on the FOWT was measured and analyzed, which has not been done before. The motions of FOWT were analyzed in time domain as well as time-frequency domain. The effect of freak wave parameters on FOWT motions was addressed, i.e., freak wave height, freak wave period, large crest, and deep trough. The dynamic response of FOWT was observed as a spike at the occurrence of freak wave in a conventional random wave, where the impact of freak wave can last for 17 spectral peak periods of wave. Data analysis shows that the motions of FOWT increased linearly with the freak wave height. In addition, the occurrence of freak wave induced the coupled effect on surge and pith, which was strengthen with the increase of freak wave height and wave period. Compared to a large crest, a deep trough of freak wave led to stronger motions and was supposed to be a key concern on the safety of the FOWT. The novel findings in this study provided a reference for the design of survival load on a FOWT and benchmarks for validating numerical models.