New Design Proposal for the TLP Type Offshore Wind Turbines
In this paper, we will show a new proposal to design a Tension Leg Platform (TLP) type offshore wind turbines. Generally, TLPs are used in deepwater oil and gas development fields due to their favorable motion characteristics. In this field, they have high set up costs. An upper structure of 5MW wind turbine, however, is only 450tons at its total weight, which is much lighter than that of oil and gas platforms. Therefore the displacement and water plane area of the platform might be smaller. As a result, wave forces could decrease and it could lead initial tensions to be lower. This idea that leads to low set up costs was discussed in our previous paper. Principal particulars of TLP prototypes was proposed and a tank test with both waves and wind that used 1/100 scale models was examined in the previous paper. Capsizing could be observed based on the conventional design method. So we reason why and how this capsizing occured in this paper. Also we propose new design process and new TLP prototypes based on this process.