Reproduction of Monopile Ringing Events in Reduced-Duration Model Tests

Author(s):  
Erin E. Bachynski ◽  
Trygve Kristiansen

Monopile support structures for offshore wind turbines may experience ringing-type responses in steep wave conditions. In order to experimentally capture the statistical distribution of the hydrodynamic loads and structural responses, traditional practice is to generate many 3-hour (full scale) realizations of the relevant sea states. An experimental campaign at 1:48 scale was carried out in the Lilletanken wave tank at NTNU/MARINTEK in order to examine the possibility of using shorter time windows to recreate irregular wave ringing events. Wave elevations and hydrodynamic loads on a rigid vertical circular cylinder in 27 m water depth were measured for a variety of 3-hour, 450 s (7.5-minute), 800 s (13.3-minute), 1150 s (19.2-minute), and 1500 s (25-minute) wave realizations, where all durations are listed in full scale. Wavelet transformations and a single degree-of-freedom oscillator were used to investigate the magnitude and repeatability of the high-frequency content of the wave loads. Large variations in the repeatability were seen among events. On average, the repeatability in the ringing response was 4.2 % for 3-hour tests, while 13.3-minute tests reproduced the same events within 9.1 %. The maximum deviation was, nonetheless, much higher when only 13.3 minutes were used.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 859
Author(s):  
Thanh-Dam Pham ◽  
Hyunkyoung Shin

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have been installed in Europe and Japan with relatively modern technology. The installation of floating wind farms in deep water is recommended because the wind speed is stronger and more stable. The design of the FOWT must ensure it is able to withstand complex environmental conditions including wind, wave, current, and performance of the wind turbine. It needs simulation tools with fully integrated hydrodynamic-servo-elastic modeling capabilities for the floating offshore wind turbines. Most of the numerical simulation approaches consider only first-order hydrodynamic loads; however, the second-order hydrodynamic loads have an effect on a floating platform which is moored by a catenary mooring system. At the difference-frequencies of the incident wave components, the drift motion of a FOWT system is able to have large oscillation around its natural frequency. This paper presents the effects of second-order wave loads to the drift motion of a semi-submersible type. This work also aimed to validate the hydrodynamic model of Ulsan University (UOU) in-house codes through numerical simulations and model tests. The NREL FAST code was used for the fully coupled simulation, and in-house codes of UOU generates hydrodynamic coefficients as the input for the FAST code. The model test was performed in the water tank of UOU.


Author(s):  
Signe Schløer ◽  
Bo Terp Paulsen ◽  
Henrik Bredmose

Two fully nonlinear irregular wave realizations with different significant wave heights are considered. The wave realizations are both calculated in the potential flow solver Ocean-Wave3D and in a coupled domain decomposed potential-flow CFD solver. The surface elevations of the calculated wave realizations compare well with corresponding surface elevations from laboratory experiments. In aeroelastic calculations of an offshore wind turbine on a monopile foundation the hydrodynamic loads due to the potential flow solver and Morison’s equation and the hydrodynamic loads calculated by the coupled domain decomposed potential-flow CFD solver result in different dynamic forces in the tower and monopile, despite that the static forces on a fixed monopile are similar. The changes are due to differences in the force profiles and wave steepness in the two solvers. The results indicate that an accurate description of the wave loads is very important in aeroelastic calculations especially in cases where the aerodynamic loads and damping are insignificant.


Author(s):  
Jing Zhang ◽  
Qin Liu ◽  
Xing Hua Shi ◽  
C. Guedes Soares

As the offshore fixed wind turbine developed, more ones will be installed in the sea field with the depth 15–50 meters. Wave force will be one of the main forces that dominate the design of the wind turbine base, which is calculated using the Morison equation traditionally. This method can predict the wave forces for the small cylinders if the drag and inertia coefficients are obtained accurately. This paper will give a series scaled tests of monopile and jacket type base of the offshore wind turbine in tank to study the nonlinear wave loads.


Author(s):  
P. Agarwal ◽  
L. Manuel

In the design of wind turbines—onshore or offshore—the prediction of extreme loads associated with a target return period requires statistical extrapolation from available loads data. The data required for such extrapolation are obtained by stochastic time-domain simulation of the inflow turbulence, the incident waves, and the turbine response. Prediction of accurate loads depends on assumptions made in the simulation models employed. While for the wind, inflow turbulence models are relatively well established, for wave input, the current practice is to model irregular (random) waves using a linear wave theory. Such a wave model does not adequately represent waves in shallow waters where most offshore wind turbines are being sited. As an alternative to this less realistic wave model, the present study investigates the use of irregular nonlinear (second-order) waves for estimating loads on an offshore wind turbine, with a focus on the fore-aft tower bending moment at the mudline. We use a 5MW utility-scale wind turbine model for the simulations. Using, first, simpler linear irregular wave modeling assumptions, we establish long-term loads and identify governing environmental conditions (i.e., the wind speed and wave height) that are associated with the 20-year return period load derived using the inverse first-order reliability method. We present the nonlinear irregular wave model next and incorporate it into an integrated wind-wave-response simulation analysis program for offshore wind turbines. We compute turbine loads for the governing environmental conditions identified with the linear model and also for an extreme environmental state. We show that computed loads are generally larger with the nonlinear wave modeling assumptions; this establishes the importance of using such refined nonlinear wave models in stochastic simulation of the response of offshore wind turbines.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255
Author(s):  
Zhenqing Liu ◽  
Yicheng Fan ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Guowei Qian

DeepCwind semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbines have been widely examined, and in some countries this type of floating offshore wind turbine has been adopted in the construction of floating wind farms. However, the DeepCwind semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbines still experience large surge motion that limits their operational time. Therefore, in this study, a semi-submersible floating platform with different numbers of offset columns, but with the same total weight, based on the DeepCwind prototype is proposed. From the free-decay test, it was found that the number of the floating columns will affect the natural frequency of the platform. Furthermore, the regular wave test in the time domain and the irregular wave test in the frequency domain show that increasing the number of the floating columns will reduce the surge motion greatly, while the effects in the heave and pitch motions are not obvious.


Author(s):  
Erin E. Bachynski ◽  
Harald Ormberg

For shallow and intermediate water depths, large monopile foundations are considered to be promising with respect to the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of offshore wind turbines. In order to reduce the LCOE by structural optimization and de-risk the resulting designs, the hydrodynamic loads must be computed efficiently and accurately. Three efficient methods for computing hydrodynamic loads are considered here: Morison’s equation with 1) undisturbed linear wave kinematics or 2) undisturbed second order Stokes wave kinematics, or 3) the MacCamy-Fuchs model, which is able to account for diffraction in short waves. Two reference turbines are considered in a simplified range of environmental conditions. For fatigue limit state calculations, accounting for diffraction effects was found to generally increase the estimated lifetime of the structure, particularly the tower. The importance of diffraction depends on the environmental conditions and the structure. For the case study of the NREL 5 MW design, the effect could be up to 10 % for the tower base and 2 % for the monopile under the mudline. The inclusion of second order wave kinematics did not have a large effect on the fatigue calculations, but had a significant impact on the structural loads in ultimate limit state conditions. For the NREL 5 MW design, a 30 % increase in the maximum bending moment under the mudline could be attributed to the second order wave kinematics; a 7 % increase was seen for the DTU 10 MW design.


Author(s):  
Atsushi Yamashita ◽  
Kinji Sekita

For the design of offshore wind turbines exposed to wind and wave loads, the method of combining the wind load and the wave load is significantly important to properly calculate the maximum stresses and deflections of the towers and the foundations1). Similarly, for the analysis of the fatigue damage critical to the structural life, the influences of combined wind and wave loads have not been clearly verified. In this paper fatigue damage at the time of typhoon passing is analyzed using actually recorded data, though intrinsically long-term data more than 10years should be used to properly evaluate the fatigue damage. This paper concludes that the fatigue damage of the tower caused by the wave load is not substantial and, thus, the fatigue damage by the combined wind and wave load is only 2–3% larger than the simple addition of the independent fatigue damages by the wind and the wave loads. The fatigue damage of the tower top, which is required to reduce the diameter in order to minimize the aerodynamic confliction with blades, is larger than that of the tower bottom. The fatigue damage at the foundation by the combined wind and wave load is 25% larger than the simple addition of the wind and wave damages, as the foundation is directly exposed to the wave load. For the foundation, the proper structural section can be designed in order to improve the structural performance against fatigue.


Author(s):  
Qi Ye ◽  
Shanshan Cheng ◽  
Boksun Kim ◽  
Keri Collins ◽  
Gregorio Iglesias

Abstract This paper summarizes the assessment of the structural analysis and design of a floating foundation for offshore floating wind turbine (FWT) based on DNVGL standard and Eurocode in terms of economy and reliability. The wind loads are calculated using empirical equations. The wave loads are obtained and verified using various methods including hand calculation, AQWA and Flow-3D. It is found that the shell thickness could be reduced significantly by introducing the stiffeners (stringer or ring), which can decrease the weight of the hull and lower the cost. While DNVGL and Eurocode yield similar design solutions if using plane shell structures, Eurocode significantly underestimates the buckling resistance of stiffened cylindrical shells.


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