scholarly journals Alternative Mooring Systems for a Very Large Offshore Wind Turbine Supported by a Semisubmersible Floating Platform

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinsong Liu ◽  
Lance Manuel

As offshore wind turbines supported on floating platforms extend to deep waters, the various effects involved in the dynamics, especially those resulting from the influence of moorings, become significant when predicting the overall integrated system response. The combined influence of waves and wind affect motions of the structure and induce tensile forces in mooring lines. The investigation of the system response under misaligned wind-wave conditions and the selection of appropriate mooring systems to minimize the turbine, tower, and mooring system loads is the subject of this study. We estimate the 50-year return response of a semisubmersible platform supporting a 13.2 MW wind turbine as well as mooring line forces when the system is exposed to four different wave headings with various environmental conditions (wind speeds and wave heights). Three different mooring system patterns are presented that include 3 or 6 mooring lines with different interline angles. Performance comparisons of the integrated systems may be used to define an optimal system for the selected large wind turbine.

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yane Li ◽  
Conghuan Le ◽  
Hongyan Ding ◽  
Puyang Zhang ◽  
Jian Zhang

The paper discusses the effects of mooring configurations on the dynamic response of a submerged floating offshore wind turbine (SFOWT) for intermediate water depths. A coupled dynamic model of a wind turbine-tower-floating platform-mooring system is established, and the dynamic response of the platform, tensions in mooring lines, and bending moment at the tower base and blade root under four different mooring configurations are checked. A well-stabilized configuration (i.e., four vertical lines and 12 diagonal lines with an inclination angle of 30°) is selected to study the coupled dynamic responses of SFOWT with broken mooring lines, and in order to keep the safety of SFOWT under extreme sea-states, the pretension of the vertical mooring line has to increase from 1800–2780 kN. Results show that the optimized mooring system can provide larger restoring force, and the SFOWT has a smaller movement response under extreme sea-states; when the mooring lines in the upwind wave direction are broken, an increased motion response of the platform will be caused. However, there is no slack in the remaining mooring lines, and the SFOWT still has enough stability.


Author(s):  
Fons Huijs

One of the main aspects of a floating offshore wind turbine design is its mooring system, which can strongly influence the floater stability and motions. This is illustrated by considering two catenary mooring systems for the same semi-submersible. The main difference between the two systems is the position of the connection points of the mooring lines on the floater, the so-called fairleads. The philosophy is that the design can be improved by shifting the fairleads to the highest feasible level. For both mooring systems, the floater motions and stability are assessed. Stability curves are derived, taking both the effect of hydrostatics and the mooring system into account. Floater motions are analyzed using both uncoupled frequency domain calculations and coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic time domain simulations. The mooring system is found to have a considerable effect on the floating stability. The effect on the motions is less profound for the considered mooring systems and limited to the low frequency range. Mooring line tensions are however significantly affected by the fairlead position. It is concluded that, with a well-designed mooring system, a smaller and thus less expensive floater can be used while still meeting the requirements in terms of stability and maximum motions. In addition, the mooring lines may be lighter as well.


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.


Author(s):  
Jiawen Li ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Jiali Du ◽  
Yichen Jiang

Abstract This paper presents a parametric design study of the mooring system for a floating offshore wind turbine. We selected the OC4 DeepCwind semisubmersible floating wind turbine as the reference structure. The design water depth was 50 m, which was the transition area between the shallow and deep waters. For the floating wind turbine working in this water area, the restoring forces and moments provided by the mooring lines were significantly affected by the heave motion amplitude of the platform. Thus, the mooring design for the wind turbine in this working depth was different from the deep-water catenary mooring system. In this study, the chosen design parameters were declination angle, fairlead position, mooring line length, environmental load direction, and mooring line number. We conducted fully coupled aero-hydro dynamic simulations of the floating wind turbine system in the time domain to investigate the influences of different mooring configurations on the platform motion and the mooring tension. We evaluated both survival and accidental conditions to analyze the mooring safety under typhoon and mooring fail conditions. On the basis of the simulation results, this study made several design recommendations for the mooring configuration for floating wind turbines in intermediate water depth applied in China.


Author(s):  
Eiji Hirokawa ◽  
Hideyuki Suzuki ◽  
Shinichiro Hirabayashi ◽  
Minon Muratake

In off-shore wind turbine, it is difficult to determine the risk of accident caused by the mooring destruction through experiment. In this paper, the authors discuss the risk, with the case of a drifting ship wanders into the wind farm. In the design of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT), drift of a FOWT is considered as a serious failure mode and the mooring system must be designed to avoid the failure. The failure of mooring line is not initiated just by extreme environmental load but can be initiated by collision with a drifting ship, which enters the wind farm. This phenomenon is difficult to investigate by a tank experiment. So far, little knowledge exists about the phenomenon. In this research, a simulator to reproduce the collision process of a FOWT and a drift ship and a progressive drift of FOWTs in a wind farm was developed. Using this simulator and statistics of drift incidents of a ship, a procedure to evaluate risk of progressive drifts in a wind farm was established. In that case, second accident that a wind turbine which has started drifting caused by the drifting ship collides with one another wind turbine is expected. As a result, the risk mainly depends on the risk of drifting caused by a large displaced ship. In addition, the risk partly depends on the arrangement of wind farm.


Author(s):  
Luca Vita ◽  
Uwe S. Paulsen ◽  
Helge A. Madsen ◽  
Per H. Nielsen ◽  
Petter A. Berthelsen ◽  
...  

This paper deals with the design of a 5MW floating offshore Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). The design is based on a new offshore wind turbine concept (DeepWind concept), consisting of a Darrieus rotor mounted on a spar buoy support structure, which is anchored to the sea bed with mooring lines [1]. The design is carried out in an iterative process, involving the different sub-components and addressing several conflicting constraints. The present design does not aim to be the final optimum solution for this concept. Instead, the goal is to have a baseline model, based on the present technology, which can be improved in the future with new dedicated technological solutions. The rotor uses curved blades, which are designed in order to minimize the gravitational loads and to be produced by the pultrusion process. The floating platform is a slender cylindrical structure rotating along with the rotor, whose stability is achieved by adding ballast at the bottom. The platform is connected to the mooring lines with some rigid arms, which are necessary to absorb the torque transmitted by the rotor. The aero-elastic simulations are carried out with Hawc2, a numerical solver developed at Risø-DTU. The numerical simulations take into account the fully coupled aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads on the structure, due to wind, waves and currents. The turbine is tested in operative conditions, at different sea states, selected according to the international offshore standards. The research is part of the European project DeepWind (2010–2014), which has been financed by the European Union (FP7-Future Emerging Technologies).


Author(s):  
Iman Ramzanpoor ◽  
Martin Nuernberg ◽  
Longbin Tao

Abstract The main drivers for the continued decarbonisation of the global energy market are renewable energy sources. Moreover, the leading technological solutions to achieve this are offshore wind turbines. As installed capacity has been increasing rapidly and shallow water near shore sites are exhausted, projects will need to be developed further from shore and often in deeper waters, which will pose greater technical challenges and constrain efforts to reduce costs. Current floating platform solutions such as the spar and semi-submersible rely on large amounts of ballast and complex structural designs with active stabilisation systems for stability of the floating offshore wind turbine platform (FOWT). The primary focus of this study is to present a design concept and mooring arrangement for an alternative floating platform solution that places emphasis on the mooring system to achieve stability for a FOWT. The tension leg buoy (TLB) is designed to support future 10MW offshore wind turbine generators. This paper presents the numerical methodology used for a coupled hydro-elastic analysis of the floater and mooring system under combined wind, wave and current effects. A concept TLB design is presented and its platform motion and mooring line tension characteristics are analysed for a three-hour time domain simulation representing operating and survival conditions in the northern North Sea with water depths of 110 metres. The importance of wave drift forces and the other non-linear excitation forces in the concept design stage are evaluated by comparing the motion and tension responses of three different numerical simulation cases with increasing numerical complexity. The preliminary TLB system design demonstrated satisfactory motion response for the operation of a FOWT and survival in a 100-year storm condition. The results show that accounting for second-order effect is vital in terms of having a clear understanding of the full behaviour of the system and the detailed response characteristics in operational and survival conditions. Extreme loads are significantly reduced when accounting for the second-order effects. This can be a key aspect to not overdesign the system and consequently achieve significant cost savings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenqing Liu ◽  
Yuangang Tu ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Guowei Qian

The International Energy Agency (IEA), under the auspices of their Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration (OC3) initiative, has completed high-level design OC-3 Hywind system. In this system the wind turbine is supported by a spar buoy platform, showing good wave-resistance performance. However, there are still large values in the motion of surge degree of freedom (DOF). Addition of clump masses on the mooring lines is an effective way of reducing the surge motion. However, the optimization of the locations where the clump masses are added is still not clear. In this study, therefore, an in-house developed code is verified by comparing the results of the original OC3 model with those by FAST. The improvement of the performance of this modified platform as a function of the location of the clump masses has been examined under three regular waves and three irregular waves. In the findings of these examination, it was apparent that attaching clump masses with only one-tenth of the mass of the total mooring-line effectively reduces the wave-induced response. Moreover, there is an obvious improvement as the depth of the location where the clump masses mounted is increased.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenqing Liu ◽  
Qingsong Zhou ◽  
Yuangang Tu ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Xugang Hua

The semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine has been studied in detail due to its good stability. However, the occurrence of typhoons are very frequent in China’s offshore area, putting forward a higher requirement for the stability of the floating wind turbine system. By changing the connection mode of the mooring line as well as the structural form of the platform based on the original OC4 model, two groups of models were examined by an in-house developed code named as the Analysis Tool of Floating Wind Turbine (AFWT). The influence of the arrangement of the mooring lines and the inclination angle of the upper columns on the motion response were clarified. It was found that the surge motion of the platform would be obviously decreased by decreasing the length of the upper segments of the mooring lines, while the heave motion of the platform would be significantly decreased as increasing the inclined angle of the columns. Therefore, a new model integrating the optimized multi-segmented mooring lines and the optimized inclined columns was proposed. The examinations showed that compared with the response motions of the original OC4 semi-submersible model, the proposed model could reduce both the surge and heave motions of the platform effectively.


Author(s):  
Yuan Ma ◽  
Chaohe Chen ◽  
Xinkuan Yan ◽  
Yijun Shen ◽  
Tianhui Fan

Abstract The mooring system is a key component connecting a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) to the seabed. Generally, the traditional mooring systems mainly control the horizontal motions of the floating platform. However, due to the existence of blades, tower structure and the requirement of power generation efficiency, there is a high requirement on the pitching performance when a platform is used for the floating wind turbine. Therefore, an innovative type of mooring system which could improve the pitch performance of the FOWT is really needed. In this paper, considering the OC3-Hywind Spar floating wind turbine, based on the original type of 3 × 3 mooring system, an innovative type of mooring system which has a better control performance of the pitch of FOWT is designed. Then, the hydrodynamic responses of the floating wind turbine platform are investigated. The influence of two different mooring system types on the hydrodynamic responses of the FOWT are compared and analyzed. The conclusions of this study could serve as a reference for the mooring system design of floating wind turbine systems.


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