Toward Identifying Aeroelastic Mechanisms in Near-Wake Instabilities of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven N. Rodriguez ◽  
Justin W. Jaworski

A free-vortex-wake aeroelastic framework evaluates the impact of blade elasticity on the near-wake formation and its linear stability for onshore and offshore configurations of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW reference wind turbine. Numerical results show that motion of the flexible rotor further destabilizes its tip-vortices through earlier onset of mutual inductance relative to the rigid rotor results for onshore and offshore turbines. The near-wake growth rate is demonstrated to depend on the azimuthal position of the rotor for all cases considered, which appears to not have been reported previously for wake stability analyses in the rotorcraft literature.

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sclavounos

Wind is a rapidly growing renewable energy source, increasing at an annual rate of 30%, with the vast majority of wind power generated from onshore wind farms. The growth of these facilities, however, is limited by the lack of inexpensive land near major population centers and the visual impact caused by large wind turbines.Wind energy generated from floating offshore wind farms is the next frontier. Vast sea areas with stronger and steadier winds are available for wind farm development and 5 MW wind turbine towers located 20 miles from the coastline are invisible. Current offshore wind turbines are supported by monopoles driven into the seafloor or other bottom mounted structures at coastal sites a few miles from shore and in water depths of 10-15 m. The primary impediment to their growth is their prohibitive cost as the water depth increases.This article discusses the technologies and the economics associated with the development of motion resistant floating offshore wind turbines drawing upon a seven-year research effort at MIT. Two families of floater concepts are discussed, inspired by developments in the oil and gas industry for the deep water exploration of hydrocarbon reservoirs. The interaction of the floater response dynamics in severe weather with that of the wind turbine system is addressed and the impact of this coupling on the design of the new generation of multi-megawatt wind turbines for offshore deployment is discussed. The primary economic drivers affecting the development of utility scale floating offshore wind farms are also addressed.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kolja Müller ◽  
Po Wen Cheng

Abstract. Fatigue load assessment of floating offshore wind turbines poses new challenges on the feasibility of numerical procedures. Due to the increased sensitivity of the considered system with respect to the environmental conditions from wind and ocean, the application of common procedures used for fixed-bottom structures results in either inaccurate simulation results or hard-to-quantify conservatism in the system design. Monte Carlo based sampling procedures provide a more realistic approach to deal with the large variation of the environmental conditions, although basic randomization has shown slow convergence. Specialized sampling methods allow efficient coverage of the complete design space, resulting in faster convergence and hence a reduced number of required simulations. In this study, a quasi-random sampling approach based on Sobol’ sequences is applied to select representative events for the determination of the lifetime damage. This is calculated applying Monte-Carlo integration, using subsets of a resulting total of 16 200 coupled time-domain simulations performed with the simulation code FAST. The considered system is the DTU 10 MW reference turbine installed on the LIFES50+ OO-Star Wind Floater Semi 10 MW floating platform. Statistical properties of the considered environmental parameters (i.e. wind speed, wave height and wave period) are determined based on the measurement data from Gulf of Maine, USA. Convergence analyses show that it is sufficient to perform around 200 simulations in order to reach less than 10 % uncertainty of lifetime fatigue damage equivalent loading. Complementary in-depth investigation is performed focusing on the load sensitivity and the impact of outliers. Recommendations for the implementation of the proposed methodology in the design process are also provided.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kolja Müller ◽  
Po Wen Cheng

Abstract. Fatigue load assessment of floating offshore wind turbines poses new challenges on the feasibility of numerical procedures. Due to the increased sensitivity of the considered system with respect to the environmental conditions from wind and ocean, the application of common procedures used for fixed-bottom structures results in either inaccurate simulation results or hard-to-quantify conservatism in the system design. Monte Carlo-based sampling procedures provide a more realistic approach to deal with the large variation in the environmental conditions, although basic randomization has shown slow convergence. Specialized sampling methods allow efficient coverage of the complete design space, resulting in faster convergence and hence a reduced number of required simulations. In this study, a quasi-random sampling approach based on Sobol sequences is applied to select representative events for the determination of the lifetime damage. This is calculated applying Monte Carlo integration, using subsets of a resulting total of 16 200 coupled time–domain simulations performed with the simulation code FAST. The considered system is the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU) 10 MW reference turbine installed on the LIFES50+ OO-Star Wind Floater Semi 10 MW floating platform. Statistical properties of the considered environmental parameters (i.e., wind speed, wave height and wave period) are determined based on the measurement data from the Gulf of Maine, USA. Convergence analyses show that it is sufficient to perform around 200 simulations in order to reach less than 10 % uncertainty of lifetime fatigue damage-equivalent loading. Complementary in-depth investigation is performed, focusing on the load sensitivity and the impact of outliers (i.e., values far away from the mean). Recommendations for the implementation of the proposed methodology in the design process are also provided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 610-630
Author(s):  
Hiromu Kakuya ◽  
Shigeo Yoshida ◽  
Iku Sato ◽  
Tomoaki Utsunomiya

One of the issues of floating offshore wind turbines is the platform-pitching vibration generated by the blade pitch angle motion of the variable speed control. This study investigated the platform-pitching vibration based on the classical control theory using a transfer function between the generator speed and the nacelle pitch angle. This study also investigated the impact of the floating platform vibration control, which can suppress the vibration by adjusting the blade pitch angle according to the nacelle pitch angle, by using a transfer function to which floating platform vibration control is added. The stabilities of these transfer functions were determined using the Nyquist stability criterion, and the impact of the floating platform vibration control parameters was investigated using Bode diagrams.


2014 ◽  
Vol 134 (8) ◽  
pp. 1096-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sho Tsujimoto ◽  
Ségolène Dessort ◽  
Naoyuki Hara ◽  
Keiji Konishi

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 598
Author(s):  
Antoine Marty ◽  
Franck Schoefs ◽  
Thomas Soulard ◽  
Christian Berhault ◽  
Jean-Valery Facq ◽  
...  

After a few weeks, underwater components of offshore structures are colonized by marine species and after few years this marine growth can be significant. It has been shown that it affects the hydrodynamic loading of cylinder components such as legs and braces for jackets, risers and mooring lines for floating units. Over a decade, the development of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines highlighted specific effects due to the smaller size of their components. The effect of the roughness of hard marine growth on cylinders with smaller diameter increased and the shape should be representative of a real pattern. This paper first describes the two realistic shapes of a mature colonization by mussels and then presents the tests of these roughnesses in a hydrodynamic tank where three conditions are analyzed: current, wave and current with wave. Results are compared to the literature with a similar roughness and other shapes. The results highlight the fact that, for these realistic roughnesses, the behavior of the rough cylinders is mainly governed by the flow and not by their motions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 543
Author(s):  
Jiawen Li ◽  
Jingyu Bian ◽  
Yuxiang Ma ◽  
Yichen Jiang

A typhoon is a restrictive factor in the development of floating wind power in China. However, the influences of multistage typhoon wind and waves on offshore wind turbines have not yet been studied. Based on Typhoon Mangkhut, in this study, the characteristics of the motion response and structural loads of an offshore wind turbine are investigated during the travel process. For this purpose, a framework is established and verified for investigating the typhoon-induced effects of offshore wind turbines, including a multistage typhoon wave field and a coupled dynamic model of offshore wind turbines. On this basis, the motion response and structural loads of different stages are calculated and analyzed systematically. The results show that the maximum response does not exactly correspond to the maximum wave or wind stage. Considering only the maximum wave height or wind speed may underestimate the motion response during the traveling process of the typhoon, which has problems in guiding the anti-typhoon design of offshore wind turbines. In addition, the coupling motion between the floating foundation and turbine should be considered in the safety evaluation of the floating offshore wind turbine under typhoon conditions.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 475
Author(s):  
Payam Aboutalebi ◽  
Fares M’zoughi ◽  
Izaskun Garrido ◽  
Aitor J. Garrido

Undesired motions in Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) lead to reduction of system efficiency, the system’s lifespan, wind and wave energy mitigation and increment of stress on the system and maintenance costs. In this article, a new barge platform structure for a FOWT has been proposed with the objective of reducing these undesired platform motions. The newly proposed barge structure aims to reduce the tower displacements and platform’s oscillations, particularly in rotational movements. This is achieved by installing Oscillating Water Columns (OWC) within the barge to oppose the oscillatory motion of the waves. Response Amplitude Operator (RAO) is used to predict the motions of the system exposed to different wave frequencies. From the RAOs analysis, the system’s performance has been evaluated for representative regular wave periods. Simulations using numerical tools show the positive impact of the added OWCs on the system’s stability. The results prove that the proposed platform presents better performance by decreasing the oscillations for the given range of wave frequencies, compared to the traditional barge platform.


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