Abstract
The rising demand for renewable energy solutions is forcing the established industries to expand and continue evolving. For the wind energy sector, the vast resources in deep sea locations have encouraged research towards the installation of turbines in deeper waters. One of the most promising technologies able to solve this challenge is the floating wind turbine foundation. For the ultimate limit state, where higher order wave loads have a significant influence, a design tool that couples non-linear excitations with structural dynamics is required. To properly describe the behavior of such a structure, a numerical model is proposed and validated by physical test results. The model is applied to a case study of a tension leg platform with a flexible topside mimicking the tower and a lumped mass mimicking the rotor-nacelle assembly. The model is additionally compared to current commercial software, where the need for the coupled higher order dynamics proposed in this paper becomes evident.
Highlights
The Horizon2020 call [1] of the EU states explicitly that innovative substructure concepts, including floating platforms, are needed for water depths beyond 50 m, in order to push the development of Energies 2014, 7 competitive low carbon energy generation
Conventional tools used in the oil and gas (O&G) industry for the assessment of the extreme event response of floating structures neglect two important aspects, making them non-conservative when used for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT)
Non-linear waves are assumed to be relevant in the ultimate limit state analysis (ULS) analysis of FOWTs installed close to the minimum target water depth of ∼50 m
Summary
The Horizon2020 call [1] of the EU states explicitly that innovative substructure concepts, including floating platforms, are needed for water depths beyond 50 m, in order to push the development of Energies 2014, 7 competitive low carbon energy generation. One focus is to reduce the overall project risks Such project risks can only be accounted for or avoided if known and if their impact can be assessed by applicable tools. Conventional tools used in the oil and gas (O&G) industry for the assessment of the extreme event response of floating structures neglect two important aspects, making them non-conservative when used for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT). Considering that the offshore wind industry intends to install floating structures at a much shallower water depth than the offshore.
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