New Extreme Model Applied to Mooring System Design Load Case Assessment

Abstract

Offshore wind energy turbines are being deployed massively in the North Sea. Most of the latest developments are monopile based due to the local bathymetry. However, future offshore wind farms will be located at larger water depths. Mainly because the nearest sites to the shoreline will be already occupied, future wind farms will be in 60 m water depth at least. This is, approximately, the limit for fixed support structures, such as monopiles, tripods and jackets. Some developers have already identified this need and some prototypes are under testing, such as WindFloat and Hywind. Floating wind technology will face some challenges. One of the most important ones is how to moderate the cost of the platform and the mooring system. Consequently, it is necessary to reduce the uncertainty during design steps. In this paper, new extreme mixed model will be applied to mooring system design. This extreme model combines instrumental and reanalysis data in order to obtain more accurate design parameters, reducing the uncertainty and improving the input that is required for the structural design of these concepts.