Experimental Study on a 3-Dimensional Hydro-Elastic Deformation of “Underwater Platform” With Multi-Towers in Waves

Author(s):  
Ken Haneda ◽  
Motohiko Murai ◽  
Jun Yamanoi

Underwater platform was proposed in OMAE 2015 for the purpose of enhancing productivity of various types of renewable energy converter on the sea and its feasibility study was carried out through 2 types of tank experiment [1]. The underwater platform which is a very large frame shape structure connects several floaters under the sea to share power cables and mooring lines and to keep relative distances between the floaters. In the experiment, 1/200 scale elastic model with three spar buoys was used. The buoys imitated spar type floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs). From the experiment, it was shown that the platform with large draft can reduce its response in waves. In this paper, we report new result and knowledge obtained by additional model experiments use the 1/200 model. In the experiment, we changed the arrangement and draft of the model and measured hydro-elastic deformation of the underwater platform in waves. From the last experiment, relationship between draft settings and response was shown. In the experiment, relationship between wave angles and response was surveyed. From the experiment, we have confirmed followings: 1. Rigid-body motion is remarkable in beam waves, 2. Elastic response is remarkable in head waves, and 3. Remarkable torsional motion is occurred in 45 degrees’ waves. The more important thing, however, is that the experimental result indicated that the platform of large draft decreases its motion in the all the wave angles.

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.


Author(s):  
H. K. Jang ◽  
H. C. Kim ◽  
M. H. Kim ◽  
K. H. Kim

Numerical tools for a single floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) have been developed by a number of researchers, while the investigation of multi-unit floating offshore wind turbines (MUFOWT) has rarely been performed. Recently, a numerical simulator was developed by TAMU to analyze the coupled dynamics of MUFOWT including multi-rotor-floater-mooring coupled effects. In the present study, the behavior of MUFOWT in time domain is described through the comparison of two load cases in maximum operational and survival conditions. A semi-submersible floater with four 2MW wind turbines, moored by eight mooring lines is selected as an example. The combination of irregular random waves, steady currents and dynamic turbulent winds are applied as environmental loads. As a result, the global motion and kinetic responses of the system are assessed in time domain. Kane’s dynamic theory is employed to formulate the global coupled dynamic equation of the whole system. The coupling terms are carefully considered to address the interactions among multiple turbines. This newly developed tool will be helpful in the future to evaluate the performance of MUFOWT under diverse environmental scenarios. In the present study, the aerodynamic interactions among multiple turbines including wake/array effect are not considered due to the complexity and uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 11665
Author(s):  
Shi Liu ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Chao Wang ◽  
Yuangang Tu

Spar-type floating offshore wind turbines commonly vibrate excessively when under the coupling impact of wind and wave. The wind turbine vibration can be controlled by developing its mooring system. Thus, this study proposes a novel mooring system for the spar-type floating offshore wind turbine. The proposed mooring system has six mooring lines, which are divided into three groups, with two mooring lines in the same group being connected to the same fairlead. Subsequently, the effects of the included angle between the two mooring lines on the mooring-system’s performance are investigated. Then, these six mooring lines are connected to six independent fairleads for comparison. FAST is utilized to calculate wind turbine dynamic response. Wind turbine surge, pitch, and yaw movements are presented and analyzed in time and frequency domains to quantitatively evaluate the performances of the proposed mooring systems. Compared with the mooring system with six fairleads, the mooring system with three fairleads performed better. When the included angle was 40°, surge, pitch, and yaw movement amplitudes of the wind turbine reduced by 39.51%, 6.8%, and 12.34%, respectively, when under regular waves; they reduced by 56.08%, 25.00%, and 47.5%, respectively, when under irregular waves. Thus, the mooring system with three fairleads and 40° included angle is recommended.


Fluids ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 200
Author(s):  
Dimitris I. Manolas ◽  
Vasilis A. Riziotis ◽  
George P. Papadakis ◽  
Spyros G. Voutsinas

A fully coupled hydro-servo-aero-elastic simulator for the analysis of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is presented. All physical aspects are addressed, and the corresponding equations are concurrently solved within the same computational framework, taking into account the wind and wave excitations, the aerodynamic response of the rotor, the hydrodynamic response of the floater, the structural dynamics of the turbine-floater-mooring lines assembly and finally the control system of the wind turbine. The components of the complex multi-physics system of a FOWT interact with each other in an implicitly coupled manner leading to a holistic type of modeling. Different modeling options, of varying fidelity and computational cost, are made available with respect to rotor aerodynamics, hydrodynamic loading of the floater and mooring system dynamics that allow for timely routine certification simulations, but also for computationally intense simulations of less conventional operating states. Structural dynamics is based on nonlinear multibody analysis that allows reproducing the large rigid body motions undergone by the FOWT, as well as large deflections and rotations of the highly flexible blades. The paper includes the description of the main physical models, of the interaction and solution strategy and representative results. Verification is carried out by comparing with other state-of-art tools that participated in the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation (OC4) IEA Annex, while the advanced simulation capabilities are demonstrated in the case of half-wake interaction of floating wind turbines by employing the free-wake aerodynamic method.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
H. F. Wang ◽  
Y. H. Fan

The tension-leg platform (TLP) supporting structure is a good choice for floating offshore wind turbines because TLP has superior motion dynamics. This study investigates the effects of TLP spoke dimensions on the motion of a floating offshore wind turbine system (FOWT). Spoke dimension and offshore floating TLP were subjected to irregular wave and wind excitation to evaluate the motion of the FOWT. This research has been divided into two parts: (1) Five models were designed based on different spoke dimensions, and aerohydroservo-elastic coupled analyses were conducted on the models using the finite element method. (2) Considering the coupled effects of the dynamic response of a top wind turbine, a supporting-tower structure, a mooring system, and two models on a reduced scale of 1 : 80 were constructed and experimentally tested under different conditions. Numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the spoke dimensions have a significant effect on the motion of FOWT and the experimental result that spoke dimension can reduce surge platform movement to improve turbine performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 699
Author(s):  
Xiangheng Feng ◽  
Yonggang Lin ◽  
Guohao Zhang ◽  
Danyang Li ◽  
Hongwei Liu ◽  
...  

Platform motions induced by waves pose a challenge to accurately predict the aerodynamic performance of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs). In view of this, the power performance and wake structure of FOWTs under platform pitch, surge, and their combined motions were investigated in this paper, using the computational fluid dynamics software, STAR-CCM+, with overset meshing and rigid body motion techniques. First, the simulation cases in single and same-phase combined motions with different amplitudes and frequencies were performed. Afterward, the approach of calculating the phase difference between pitch and surge motions was proposed to investigate the influence of the combined motion with phase difference on the aerodynamic performance. Results show that the increment of amplitude and frequency augments the mean power output and aggravates the power fluctuation in single and same-phase combined motions. The intensity of power variation under combined motion with a phase difference is weakened at 0.1 Hz compared to the single motion, while enhanced at 0.2 Hz, showing a different influence law on the aerodynamic performance. In addition, this paper established the power fluctuation table based on real sea states of Shidao in China, providing a certain reference for the controller design in this sea area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eloi Daniel de Araujo Neto ◽  
William Rodriguez ◽  
Fabr\xedcio Nogueira Corr\xeaa ◽  
Beatriz De Souza Leite Pires De Lima ◽  
Breno Pinheiro Jacob ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Lemmer ◽  
Wei Yu ◽  
Heiner Steinacker ◽  
Danai Skandali ◽  
Steffen Raach

Abstract Aero-hydro-servo-elastic modeling of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) is a key component in the design process of various components of the system. Different approaches to order reduction have been investigated with the aim of improving structural design, manufacturing, transport and installation, but also the dynamic behavior, which is largely affected by the blade pitch controller. The present work builds on previous works on the SLOW (Simplified Low-Order Wind Turbine) code, which has already been used for the above purposes, including controller design. While the previous rigid rotor model gives good controllers in most cases, we investigate in the present work the question if aero-elastic effects in the design model can improve advanced controllers. The SLOW model is extended for the flap-wise bending and coupled to NREL’s AeroDyn, linearized and verified with the OlavOlsen OO-Star Wind Floater Semi 10MW public FOWT model. The results show that the nonlinear and linear reduced-order SLOW models agree well against OpenFAST. The state-feedback Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) applied with the same weight functions to both models, the old actuator disk, and the new aero-elastic model shows that the LQR becomes more sensitive to nonlinear excitation and that the state feedback matrix is significantly different, which has an effect on the performance and potentially also on the robustness. Thus modeling uncertainties might even be more critical for the LQR of the higher-fidelity model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Piscopo ◽  
Antonio Scamardella ◽  
Giovanni Battista Rossi ◽  
Francesco Crenna ◽  
Marta Berardengo

The fatigue assessment of mooring lines for floating offshore wind turbines represents a challenging issue not only for the reliable design of the stationkeeping system but also for the economic impact on the installation and maintenance costs over the entire lifetime of the offshore wind farm. After a brief review about the state-of-art, the nonlinear time-domain hydrodynamic model of floating offshore wind turbines moored by chain cables is discussed. Subsequently, the assessment of the fatigue damage in the mooring lines is outlined, focusing on the combined-spectrum approach. The relevant fatigue parameters, due to the low- and wave-frequency components of the stress process, are estimated by two different methods. The former is based on the time-domain analysis of the filtered stress process time history. The latter, instead, is based on the spectral analysis of the stress process by two advanced methods, namely the Welch and Thomson ones. Subsequently, a benchmark study is performed, assuming as reference floating offshore wind turbine the OC4-DeepCWind semisubmersible platform, equipped with the 5 MW NREL wind turbine. The cumulative fatigue damage is determined for eight load conditions, including both power production and parked wind turbine situations. A comparative analysis between time-domain and spectral analysis methods is also performed. Current results clearly show that the endorsement of advanced spectral analysis methods can be helpful to improve the reliability of the fatigue life assessment of mooring lines.


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