Abstract
The strong and stable wind at offshore locations and the increasing demand for energy have made the application of wind turbines in deeper water surge. A novel concept of a 5 MW baseline Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (FVAWT) and a 5 MW optimised FVAWT with the DeepWind Darrieus rotor and the optimised DeepWind Darrieus rotor, respectively, were studied extensively. The structural responses, fatigue damages, platform global motions and mooring line dynamics of the FVAWTs were investigated comprehensively during normal operating conditions under steady wind and turbulent wind conditions, using a coupled non-linear aero-hydro-servo-elastic code (the Simo-Riflex-DMS code) which was developed by Wang et al. for modeling FVAWTs. This coupled code incorporates the models for the turbulent wind field, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structural dynamics, and generator controller. The simulation is performed in a fully coupled manner in time domain. The comparison of responses under different wind conditions were used to demonstrate the effect of turbulence on both FVAWTs dynamic responses. The turbulent wind condition has the advantage of reducing the 2P effects. Furthermore, comparative studies of the FVAWTs responses were undertaken to explore the advantages of adopting the optimised 5 MW DeepWind Darrieus rotor over the baseline model. The results identified the 5 MW optimised FVAWT to having: lower Fore-Aft (FA) but higher lower Side-Side (SS) bending moments of structural components; lower motions amplitude; lower short-term fatigue equivalent loads and a further reduced 2P effects.
Highlights
The risk, price inconsistency and environmental impact associated with oil and gas exploration and production have driven a focus on renewable energy
The analysis for the Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (FVAWT) were focused on the effect of turbulence on the FVAWTs’ dynamic responses under normal operating conditions by comparing the responses under steady wind condition with that under turbulent wind condition
The dynamic responses of the FVAWTs include the global motions of the platform, the structural responses of the flexible components, and the mooring lines dynamics
Summary
The risk, price inconsistency and environmental impact associated with oil and gas exploration and production have driven a focus on renewable energy. The strong and stable wind at offshore locations and the increasing demand for energy have surged the application of wind turbines in deep water. The Floating Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (FHAWT) has been a research focus in deep water wind power production due to its commercial success in onshore applications. The application of Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (FVAWT) in deep offshore waters has potential because of their economic advantages in installation and maintenance. The application of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) rotor technology in large wind turbines could reduce the cost-of-energy (COE) by over 20% [1]. Due to the higher maintainability of FVAWTs, their ability to capture wind energy irrespective of wind direction without a yaw control mechanism, lower center of gravity, economies of installation amongst other designs as compared with
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