Review of Reliability-Based Risk Analysis Methods Used in the Offshore Wind Industry

Abstract

The design process and asset management of floating offshore wind turbines are subject to many uncertainties. Risk and reliability analysis methods can be utilized to analyze these uncertainties in a systematic manner. Thus, in this chapter, reliability methods that are applied in the offshore and marine renewable energy industries are classified and analyzed in terms of their suitability for the offshore wind industry as well as their strengths and drawbacks, and current trends and alternative approaches for overcoming the remaining limitations are elaborated on. After a general overview and categorization of the main reliability assessment techniques, a focused description and classification of qualitative and quantitative approaches for offshore wind turbine systems is provided. This analysis is underlain by an in-depth literature review that is systematically conducted for the most recent research studies from the last decade, with ‘offshore’ and ‘reliability’ as the main keywords. While the focus lies on offshore wind turbines, for which, however, the information density is still quite low, other literature and application examples from related offshore industries are taken into account as well. More than 100 articles are examined in total, with additional knowledge gleaned from conferences and industry experience. Finally, the challenges for common reliability assessment techniques when being applied to offshore wind turbines are elaborated, addressing how and to what extent the detailed methods are currently capable of dealing with these challenges, what limitations remain, and which approaches may evolve further.