Abstract
The vibration of offshore wind turbines caused by external loads is significant, which will cause fatigue damage to offshore wind turbines. Wind load is the main load during the operation period of the wind turbine, and available studies have shown that the external wind field often exhibits certain non-Gaussian characteristics. This article aims to obtain the fatigue assessment of the monopile foundation of the wind turbine under the non-Gaussian wind fields. A 5 MW wind turbine is selected in this article, and OpenFAST is applied to simulate the wind load. By comparing the Mises stress time histories of the pile foundation at a different depth, the fatigue analysis of the critical spots of the pile foundation is obtained. In the analysis of fatigue damage, the rain flow counting method is adopted, and the two-segment S-N curve is selected to analyze the fatigue life of the critical spots. The results show that, by taking the non-Gaussian characteristic of the wind field into account, the fatigue life of the monopile foundation decreases. Therefore, attention should be paid to the influence of non-Gaussian characteristics of wind fields on the fatigue life of monopile-supported wind turbines.
Highlights
Wind is a clean and renewable source of energy, and it has been identified as a key element to reduce fossil fuel dependency by International Energy Agency
When considering the effect of wave nonlinearity on the fatigue damage of large-diameter monopiles of offshore wind turbines, it is shown that the result of a nonlinear wave is 18% larger than that of the linear wave case [7]. e influence of natural environmental corrosion on the fatigue life of the wind turbine structure is studied by Do et al [8], and they analyzed the fatigue life of the tower base based on Monte Carlo simulation and multibody dynamics
To fill the deficiencies of this research, this paper focuses on the critical spots of the monopile foundation of the wind turbine under the Gaussian and different non-Gaussian wind fields to evaluate the fatigue life of the monopile foundation
Summary
Wind is a clean and renewable source of energy, and it has been identified as a key element to reduce fossil fuel dependency by International Energy Agency. E fatigue damage at the tower base of the wind turbine structure under softening non-Gaussian wind fields is reduced by 9% compared with the Gaussian case [17]. E aforementioned studies have shown that the nonGaussian characteristic of the wind field will reduce the fatigue life of the tower of a wind turbine. Us, there are no studies on the fatigue damage assessment of a monopile offshore wind turbine when considering the non-Gaussian characteristic of the wind fields. To fill the deficiencies of this research, this paper focuses on the critical spots of the monopile foundation of the wind turbine under the Gaussian and different non-Gaussian wind fields to evaluate the fatigue life of the monopile foundation
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