scholarly journals Model Test of the STC Concept in Survival Modes

Author(s):  
Ling Wan ◽  
Zhen Gao ◽  
Torgeir Moan

The STC (Spar Torus Combination) concept combines a Spar floating wind turbine and a torus-shaped heaving-body wave energy converter (WEC). Numerical simulation has shown positive synergy between the WEC and the Spar floating wind turbine in operational conditions. However, in extreme wind and wave conditions, it is challenging to maintain structural integrity, especially for the WEC. To ensure survivability of this concept in extreme conditions, three survival modes have been proposed. To investigate the performance of the STC in extreme conditions, model tests with a scale factor of 1:50 were carried out in the towing tank of MARINTEK, Norway. Two survival modes were tested. In both modes, the Torus WEC was fixed to the Spar. In the first mode, the Torus WEC is at the mean water surface, while in the second mode, the Torus WEC is fully submerged to a specified position. In the tests, 6 D.O.F rigid body motions, mooring line tensions, forces in 3 directions (X, Y and Z) between the Spar and Torus were measured, wind velocity and wind force were also measured by a sensor in front of the model and a load cell installed on the wind disc. In this paper, the model test set-up for the two survival modes are described, and then decay tests, regular wave tests and the statistical tests for wind only, irregular wave only and irregular wave plus wind are presented, compared and analyzed. In the mean water level survival mode, the Torus had a small draft and large water plane area, so slamming and green water were observed as expected. In addition, Mathieu instability phenomena were observed during the regular wave test. In some large wave conditions in the fully submerged mode, no severe wave load occurred. All the results are presented in model scale unless specified, for direct comparison with numerical simulations later.

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 76-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Duan ◽  
Zhiqiang Hu ◽  
J.M. Niedzwecki

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 216-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Xu ◽  
Yanlin Shao ◽  
Zhen Gao ◽  
Torgeir Moan

Author(s):  
Fei Duan ◽  
Zhiqiang Hu ◽  
Jin Wang

Wind power has great potential because of its clean and renewable production compared to the traditional power. Most of the present researches for floating wind turbine rely on the hydro-aero-elastic-servo simulation codes and have not been exhaustively validated yet. Thus, model tests are needed and make sense for its high credibility to master the kinetic characters of floating offshore structures. The characters of kinetic responses of the spar-type wind turbine are investigated through model test research technique. This paper describes the methodology for wind/wave model test that carried out at Deepwater Offshore Basin in Shanghai Jiao Tong University at a scale of 1:50. A Spar-type floater was selected to support the wind turbine in this test and the model blade was geometrically scaled down from the original NREL 5 MW reference wind turbine blade. The detail of the scaled model of wind turbine and the floating supporter, the test set-up configuration, the mooring system, the high-quality wind generator that can create required homogeneous and low turbulence wind, and the instrumentations to capture loads, accelerations and 6 DOF motions are described in detail, respectively. The isolated wind/wave effects and the integrated wind-wave effects on the floating wind turbine are analyzed, according to the test results.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhun Song ◽  
Hee-Chang Lim

In this study, the typical ocean environment was simulated with the aim to investigate the dynamic response under various environmental conditions of a Tension Leg Platform (TLP) type floating offshore wind turbine system. By applying Froude scaling, a scale model with a scale of 1:200 was designed and model experiments were carried out in a lab-scale wave flume that generated regular periodic waves by means of a piston-type wave generator while a wave absorber dissipated wave energy on the other side of the channel. The model was designed and manufactured based on the standard prototype of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW offshore wind turbine. In the first half of the study, the motion and structural responses for operational wave conditions of the North Sea near Scotland were considered to investigate the performance of a traditional TLP floating wind turbine compared with that of a newly designed TLP with added mooring lines. The new mooring lines were attached with the objective of increasing the horizontal stiffness of the system and thereby reducing the dominant motion of the TLP platform (i.e., the surge motion). The results of surge translational motions were obtained both in the frequency domain, using the response amplitude operator (RAO), and in the time domain, using the omega arithmetic method for the relative velocity. The results obtained show that our suggested concept improves the stability of the platform and reduces the overall motion of the system in all degrees-of-freedom. Moreover, the modified design was verified to enable operation in extreme wave conditions based on real data for a 100-year return period of the Northern Sea of California. The loads applied by the waves on the structure were also measured experimentally using modified Morison equation—the formula most frequently used to estimate wave-induced forces on offshore floating structures. The corresponding results obtained show that the wave loads applied on the new design TLP had less amplitude than the initial model and confirmed the significant contribution of the mooring lines in improving the performance of the system.


Author(s):  
Anthony M. Viselli ◽  
Andrew J. Goupee ◽  
Habib J. Dagher

A new floating wind turbine platform design called VolturnUS developed by the University of Maine uses innovations in materials, construction, and deployment technologies such as a concrete semisubmersible hull and a composite tower to reduce the costs of offshore wind. These novel characteristics require research and development prior to full-scale construction. This paper presents a unique offshore model testing effort aimed at derisking full-scale commercial projects by providing scaled global motion data, allowing for testing of materials representative of the full-scale system, and demonstrating full-scale construction and deployment methods. A 1:8-scale model of a 6 MW semisubmersible floating wind turbine was deployed offshore Castine, ME, in June 2013. The model includes a fully operational commercial 20 kW wind turbine and was the first grid-connected offshore wind turbine in the U.S. The testing effort includes careful selection of the offshore test site, the commercial wind turbine that produces the correct aerodynamic thrust given the wind conditions at the test site, scaling methods, model design, and construction. A suitable test site was identified that produced scaled design load cases (DLCs) prescribed by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) Guide for Building and Classing Floating Offshore Wind Turbines. A turbine with a small rotor diameter was selected because it produces the correct thrust load given the wind conditions at the test site. Some representative data from the test are provided in this paper. Model test data are compared directly to full-scale design predictions made using coupled aeroelastic/hydrodynamic software. Scaled VolturnUS performance data during DLCs show excellent agreement with full-scale predictive models. Model test data are also compared directly without scaling against a numerical representation of the 1:8-scale physical model for the purposes of numerical code validation. The numerical model results compare favorably with data collected from the physical model.


Author(s):  
Aabas Ahmad

Abstract: An efficient method for restraining the large vibration displacements and loads of offshore floating wind turbines under harsh marine environment is proposed by putting tuned mass dampers in the cabin. A dynamics model for a barge-type offshore floating wind turbine with a fore–aft tuned mass damper is established based on Lagrange’s equations; the nonlinear least squares Leven berg–Marquardt algorithm is employed to identify the parameters of the wind turbine; different parameter optimization methods are adopted to optimize tuned mass damper parameters by considering the standard deviation of the tower top longitudinal displacement as the objective function. Aiming at five typical combined wind and wave load cases under normal running state of the wind turbine, the dynamic responses of the wind turbine with/without tuned mass damper are simulated and the suppression effect of the tuned mass damper is investigated over the wide range of load cases. The results show that when the wind turbine vibrates in the state of damped free vibration, the standard deviation of the tower top longitudinal displacement is decreased approximately 60% in 100 s by the optimized tuned mass damper with the optimum tuned mass damper mass ratio 1.8%. The standard deviation suppression rates of the longitudinal displacements and loads in the tower and blades increase with the tuned mass damper mass ratio when the wind turbine vibrates under the combined wind and wave load cases. When the mass ratio changes from 0.5% to 2%, the maximum suppression rates vary from 20% to 50% correspondingly, which effectively reduce vibration responses of the offshore floating wind turbine. The results of this article preliminarily verify the feasibilities of using a tuned mass damper for restraining vibration of the barge-type offshore floating wind turbine


Author(s):  
Yilun Li ◽  
Shuangxi Guo ◽  
Yue Kong ◽  
Weimin Chen ◽  
Min Li

Abstract As offshore wind turbine is developed toward larger water depth, the dynamics coming from structural and fluid inertia and damping effects of the mooring-line gets more obvious, that makes the response analysis of the large floating wind turbine under wind&wave load more challenging. In this study, the dynamic response of a spar floating wind turbine under random wind and wave loads is examined by the modified FEM simulations. Here an integrated system including flexible multi-bodies such as blades, tower, spar and mooring-lines is considered while the catenary dynamics is involved. The dynamic restoring performance of the catenary mooring-line is analyzed based on the vector equations of 3D curved flexible beam and its numerical simulations. Then the structural responses, e.g. the top tension, structural displacements and stress of the tower and the blade, undergoing random wind&wave loads, are examined. Morevoer, the influences of the catenary dynamics on its restoring performance and the hysteresis behavior are presented. Our numerical results show: the dynamics of mooring-line may significantly increase the top tension, and, particularly, the snap tension could be more than 3 times larger than the quasi-static one. Moreover, the structural response under random wind&wave load gets smaller mainly because of the hysteresis effect coming from the mooring-line dynamics. The floating body displacement at surge frequency is around 20% smaller, and the tower root stress at bending frequency is about 30% smaller than the quasi-static values respectively.


2018 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 95-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Li ◽  
Yan Gao ◽  
Zhiqiang Hu ◽  
Zhiming Yuan ◽  
Sandy Day ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Yanqiu Zhang ◽  
Yucheng Hou ◽  
Jiabei Yuan ◽  
Zhimin Tan

The results of a study on the statistic properties of the stochastic processes of both irregular wave and riser response were presented in the paper OMAE2014-23196. Following on from that work, the present paper is devoted to the statistic properties of the mean-crossing maxima of the stochastic process of riser response and the statistic properties of the largest maxima, resulting from a number of 3-hour simulations with different wave seeds. The objective of the study is to find a more efficient method for evaluating the most probable maximum (MPM) value of riser response, i.e. using as few as possible simulations to find a reliable expectation to the MPM. Global dynamic analysis with irregular wave is widely used in riser system design, though it is very time-consuming compared with regular wave. This is because irregular wave can more realistically model the sea state in the field of the riser system compared with regular wave. However time consuming irregular wave analysis may be there remains a perplexing issue, which is the randomness in the analysis results induced by wave seed; i.e. the extreme value of riser response resulting from a 3-hour simulation varies with the wave seed which is arbitrarily selected for the simulation. If a number of 3-hour simulations are performed, then a statistic method is used to evaluate the MPM value, two questions must be answered. First, how many simulations should be run, and second, what statistic method should be used? Based on the study to the statistic properties of the maxima of riser response and the largest maxima, answers to the above questions are proposed. For universal applicability the study was conducted reflecting four risers which had different configurations and water depths.


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