Motion Performances of a 5 MW VAWT Supported by Spar Floating Foundation With Heave Plates

Author(s):  
Liqin Liu ◽  
Ying Guo ◽  
Weichen Jin ◽  
Rui Yuan

The VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine) has advantages in the development of large-scale offshore wind power. This paper presents a motion study of a 5 MW floating VAWT composed of the Φ type Darrieus wind turbine and a truss spar floating foundation with heave plates. The surge, heave and pitch motion equations considering the effects of retardation function of the floating VAWT were established and solved numerically. Several load cases were carried out to analyze the motion performances of the floating VAWT. The results show that the wind forces have minimal influence on the heave motions of the floating VAWT, while they obviously increase its surge and pitch mean displacements. For LC3, the surge, heave and pitch frequencies of the floating VAWT are dominated by the wave frequencies, and the 2P (twice-per-revolution) response of pitch motions is not significant. For LC4, the 2P response of pitch motions of the floating VAWT are more significant than LC4.

Author(s):  
Liqin Liu ◽  
Xiaorui Zhang ◽  
Ying Guo ◽  
Yu Qiu

The vertical axis wind turbine has more advantages in the development of the large-scale offshore wind power, on account of that its drive system is placed on the bottom of the turbine and has little influence on the tower. This paper presents a preliminary design of a Spar foundation, which can support a Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine with a generated power of 5 MW. The influences of structure’s parameters of the floating foundation, such as the radius of flotation tank, the radius and height of upper ballast tank, the height of bottom ballast tank and other factors on the motions of the floating wind turbine system are analyzed. The initial structure parameters of the floating foundation are determined, and the hydrodynamic parameters are calculated as well. It is found that the radius of floatation tank and bottom ballast tank have more impact on the Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) and natural period of heave of the floating foundation. The interval of center of gravity and center of buoyancy and the height of upper ballast tank influence obviously on the RAOs and natural period of pitch of the floating foundation. Heave and pitch motions of the floating foundation designed here are relatively small. The natural periods of heave and pitch of the floating foundation are away from the main wave energy periods.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liqin Liu ◽  
Weichen Jin ◽  
Ying Guo

This paper studies the dynamic characteristic of the truss Spar-type floating foundation used to support the offshore vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT). The effects of changes in foundation structural parameters on its motions were evaluated. The results show that radius of the buoyancy tank, radius of the upper mechanical tank, interval of the center of gravity and center of buoyancy, and height of the upper mechanical tank have important effects on the heave and pitch motions of the foundation. Two sets of foundation parameters (FS-1 and FS-2) were selected to support the 5 MW Darrieus wind turbine. The motion performances of the two floating VAWTs, S-1 (the VAWT supported by FS-1) and S-2 (the VAWT supported by FS-2), were analyzed and compared. It was observed that the amplitudes of the heave and pitch motions of the floating VAWT depend on the wave loads; the mean values of the heave and pitch motions depend on the aerodynamic loads. The floating VAWT S-2 had better motion performance; its heave and pitch motions were all small. The heave frequencies of the floating VAWT were equal to the wave frequencies. For the pitch frequencies, there is a component of the rotor rotational frequency (0.175 Hz) for cases LC1 to LC4, while the amplitudes of the twice-per-revolution (2P) response are far smaller than the amplitudes of the wave response.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marten ◽  
Georgios Pechlivanoglou ◽  
Christian Navid Nayeri ◽  
Christian Oliver Paschereit

Recently, a new interest in vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) technology is fueled by research on floating support structures for large-scale offshore wind energy application. For the application on floating structures at multimegawatt size, the VAWT concept may offer distinct advantages over the conventional horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) design. As an example, VAWT turbines are better suited for upscaling, and at multimegawatt size, the problem of periodic fatigue cycles reduces significantly due to a very low rotational speed. Additionally, the possibility to store the transmission and electricity generation system at the bottom, compared to the tower top as in a HAWT, can lead to a considerable reduction of material logistics costs. However, as most VAWT research stalled in the mid 1990s, no sophisticated and established tools to investigate this concept further exist today. Due to the complex interaction between unsteady aerodynamics and movement of the floating structure, fully coupled simulation tools modeling both aero and structural dynamics are needed. A nonlinear lifting line free vortex wake (LLFVW) code was recently integrated into the open source wind turbine simulation suite qblade. This paper describes some of the necessary adaptions of the algorithm, which differentiates it from the usual application in HAWT simulations. A focus is set on achieving a high robustness and computational efficiency. A short validation study compares LLFVW results with those of a two-dimensional (2D) unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) simulation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0309524X2110379
Author(s):  
Brian Hand

The vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) configuration has many advantages for an offshore wind turbine Installation. In this paper, the three dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics analysis of a large-scale 5 MW VAWT is conducted. At the optimum tip-speed ratio (TSR), the VAWT maximum inline force was 75% larger than the maximum lateral force. It was found the dynamic stall effects cause the VAWT flow field to become increasingly asymmetrical at the mid-span plane, when the TSR is reduced. The attachment of end plates to the blade tips, resulted in a performance improvement during the upwind phase with the average blade torque coefficient in this range being increased by 4.71%. Conversely, during the blade downwind phase a reduction in performance was found due to the increase in drag from the end plates and the average blade torque coefficient in this phase was reduced by 23.1%.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Tan ◽  
Tomoki Ikoma ◽  
Yasuhiro Aida ◽  
Koichi Masuda

Abstract The barge-type foundation with moonpool(s) is a promising type of platform for floating offshore wind turbines, since the moonpool(s) could improve the hydrodynamic performance at particular frequencies and reduce the costs of construction. In this paper, the horizontal mean drift force and yaw drift moment of a barge-type platform with four moonpools are numerically and experimentally investigated. Physical model tests are carried out in a wave tank, where a 2MW vertical-axis wind turbine is modelled in the 1:100 scale. By varying the rotating speed of the turbine and the mass of the blades, the gyroscopic effects due to turbine rotations on the mean drift forces are experimentally examined. The wave diffraction and radiation code WAMIT is used to carry out numerical analysis of wave drift force and moment. The experimental results indicate that the influence of the rotations of a vertical-axis wind turbine on the sway drift force is generally not very significant. The predictions by WAMIT are in reasonable agreement with the measured data. Numerical results demonstrate that the horizontal mean drift force and yaw drift moment at certain frequencies could be reduced by moonpool(s).


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Cevasco ◽  
M Collu ◽  
CM Rizzo ◽  
M Hall

Despite several potential advantages, relatively few studies and design support tools have been developed for floating vertical axis wind turbines. Due to the substantial aerodynamics differences, the analyses of vertical axis wind turbine on floating structures cannot be easily extended from what have been already done for horizontal axis wind turbines. Therefore, the main aim of the present work is to compare the dynamic response of the floating offshore wind turbine system adopting two different mooring dynamics approaches. Two versions of the in-house aero-hydro-mooring coupled model of dynamics for floating vertical axis wind turbine (FloVAWT) have been used, employing a mooring quasi-static model, which solves the equations using an energetic approach, and a modified version of floating vertical axis wind turbine, which instead couples with the lumped mass mooring line model MoorDyn. The results, in terms of mooring line tension, fatigue and response in frequency have been obtained and analysed, based on a 5 MW Darrieus type rotor supported by the OC4-DeepCwind semisubmersible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yichen Jiang ◽  
Peidong Zhao ◽  
Li Zou ◽  
Zhi Zong ◽  
Kun Wang

Abstract The offshore wind industry is undergoing a rapid development due to its advantage over the onshore wind farm. The vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) is deemed to be potential in offshore wind energy utilization. A design of the offshore vertical axis wind turbine with a deflector is proposed and studied in this paper. Two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is employed to investigate the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine. An effective method of obtaining the blade’s angle of attack (AoA) is introduced in CFD simulation to help analyze the blade aerodynamic torque variation. The numerical simulations are validated against the measured torque and wake velocity, and the results show a good agreement with the experiment. It is found that the blade instantaneous torque is correlated with the local AoA. Among the three deflector configurations, the front deflector leads to favorable local flow for the blade, which is responsible for the improved performance.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-394
Author(s):  
Changduk Kong ◽  
Haseung Lee

AbstractSince the focus on the energy crisis and environmental issues due to excessive fossil fuel consumption, wind power has been considered as an important renewable energy source. Recently, several megawatt-class large-scale wind turbine systems have been developed in some countries. Even though the large-scale wind turbine can effectively produce electrical power, the small-scale wind turbine has been continuously developed due to some advantages; for instance, it can be easily built at a low cost without any limitation of location, i.e., even in the city. In case of small-scale wind turbines, the vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) is used in the city despite having a lower efficiency than the horizontal axis wind turbine. Furthermore, most small-scale wind turbine systems have been designed at the rated wind speed of around 12 m/s. This aim of this work is to design a high-efficiency 500W class composite VAWT blade that is applicable to relatively low-speed regions. With regard to the aerodynamic design of the blade, parametric studies are carried out to decide an optimal aerodynamic configuration. The aerodynamic efficiency and performance of the designed VAWT is confirmed by computational fluid dynamics analysis. The structural design is performed by the load case study, initial sizing using the netting rule and the rule of mixture, structural analysis using finite element method (FEM), fatigue life estimation and structural test. The prototype blade is manufactured by hand lay-up and the matched die molding. The experimental structural test results are compared with the FEM analysis results. Finally, to evaluate the prototype VAWT including designed blades, the performance test is performed using a truck to simulate various ranges of wind speeds and some measuring equipment. According to the performance evaluation result, the estimated performance agrees well with the experimental test results in all operating ranges.


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).


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