Hydrodynamic analysis of the combined structure of offshore monopile wind turbine foundation and aquaculture cage

Abstract

Reliable prediction in hydrodynamics is crucial for the design of marine structures, especially for columnar structures such as offshore wind turbine foundations. A combined structure of fixed monopile wind turbine foundation and bottom-seated circular aquaculture cage is proposed for efficiently utilizing the offshore space and reducing the wave forces on the monopile wind turbine foundation. A further developed volume-averaged numerical model is adopted to simulate the pressure drop due to clean and fouled cages by introducing the porous media theory, in which the coefficients of source terms are determined by the least square method based on hydrodynamic force on cage from existing experimental data. The Stokes fifth-order wave theory is considered reliable in simulating the nonlinear waves on slopes and corresponding inline wave force by comparing with multiple existing experimental data. Then the effects of incident wave steepness, seabed bottom slopes and cage diameters on simulation results are analyzed. Results reveal the fouled cage can effectively reduce inline wave forces relative to the clean cage of the combined structure, accompanying a significant resonance effect of wave motion inside the cage.