scholarly journals Validation of Hydrodynamic Loads on a Large-Diameter Monopile in Regular Waves

Author(s):  
Fatemeh H. Dadmarzi ◽  
Maxime Thys ◽  
Erin E. Bachynski

Abstract Validated hydrodynamic load models for large-diameter support structures are increasingly important as the industry moves towards larger offshore wind turbines. Experiments at 1:50 scale with stiff, vertical, bottom-fixed, extra-large (9m and 11m diameter full-scale) monopiles in steep waves are conducted. The tests are carried out at two water depths, 27 m and 33 m. A range of regular waves, with varying period and amplitude, are used. The first, second, and third harmonics of the total wave loads, where measurements are available, are calculated with different methods. For the first harmonic of the force (and consequently the mudline moment), MacCamy-Fuchs gives the best agreement with experiments, especially for the larger diameter model. For the second harmonic, for the shortest waves the generalized FNV theory and Morison equation overpredict the forces, while for the longest (and largest) waves, the opposite is observed. The third harmonic of the force is generally overpredicted by the calculations.

Author(s):  
P. Agarwal ◽  
L. Manuel

Assuring uniform reliability levels across various system configurations is the intent of design standards based on the Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) methodology. One such design standard for offshore wind turbines developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission was based on the European experience and may not necessarily represent conditions suited for U.S. waters where several offshore wind energy projects are being planned. It is, hence, of interest to investigate how uniform is the reliability of offshore wind turbines under various levels of wind and wave loads. We assess the reliability of bottom-supported offshore wind turbines in ultimate limit states associated with the fore-aft tower bending moment at the mudline. We compare reliability index estimates for different characteristic load definitions and assumed coefficients of variation for wind and wave loads, as well as for various hydrodynamic to aerodynamic load influences. Effectively, such variations serve to describe different sites and turbine designs. Since large-diameter monopile support structures are dominated by inertia forces, while jacket or tripod support structures with smaller diameter members are dominated by drag forces, we extend an available combined wind-wave load effect model for offshore wind turbines, to include both drag and inertia forces. We show that reasonably uniform reliability levels may be achieved for various combinations of wind and wave loads. Results suggest that drag-dominated wave load cases result in smaller and less uniform reliability estimates than is the case for inertia-dominated wave load cases.


Author(s):  
Anders Wedel Nielsen ◽  
Flemming Schlütter ◽  
Jacob V. Tornfeldt Sørensen ◽  
Henrik Bredmose

During the last decades more and more wind farms have been erected offshore. Most of these wind farms are located at relatively shallow water. The majority of the offshore wind turbines are founded on monopiles. Many of these offshore wind farms are exposed to large and steep waves, in some cases even breaking waves. The loads on the piles caused by waves can be significant and a better knowledge of the forcing caused by real sea states, including irregular waves and directional spreading is required to optimize the design. The present physical model tests have been conducted in order to determine the effects of wave directionality and breaking of irregular waves. Piles with and without secondary structures have been tested. The waves were shoaled over a sloping bed and the pile was placed at two different positions with varying bed slopes. The three forcing components (Fx, Fy, Fz) were measured at the bottom of the pile during the experiments. Breaking waves occurred around the pile in most of the tests and significant slamming forces were observed in the cases where breaking waves hit the pile which is well known from the literature. The experimental results indicated that the slamming force may be reduced when the wave spreading is increased, similar to the case of non-breaking waves.


Author(s):  
Yu Wang ◽  
Hamn-Ching Chen ◽  
Guilherme Vaz ◽  
Simon Mewes

Abstract Utilization of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes to perform hydrodynamic analysis of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) is increasing recently. However, verification studies of the simulations that quantifying numerical uncertainties and permitting a detailed validation in a next phase is often disregarded. In this work, a verification study of CFD simulations of a semi-submersible FOWT design under regular waves is performed. To accomplish this goal, Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) are derived from the computational results of the heave, surge and pitch motions. Four grids with different grid sizes with a constant refinement ratio are generated for verification of spatial convergence. Three different time increments are paired with each grid for verification of temporal convergence. The verification study is performed by estimation of the numerical errors and uncertainties using procedures proposed by Eca and Hoekstra [1].


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui He ◽  
Ji Ji ◽  
Jisheng Zhang ◽  
Wei Peng ◽  
Zufeng Sun ◽  
...  

With the development of offshore wind energy in China, more and more offshore wind turbines are being constructed in rock-based sea areas. However, the large diameter and thin-walled steel rock-socketed monopiles are very scarce at present, and both the construction and design are very difficult. For the design, the dynamic safety during the whole lifetime of the wind turbine is difficult to guarantee. Dynamic safety of a turbine is mostly controlled by the dynamic impedances of the rock-socketed monopile, which are still not well understood. How to choose the appropriate impedances of the socketed monopiles so that the wind turbines will neither resonant nor be too conservative is the main problem. Based on a numerical model in this study, the accurate impedances are obtained for different frequencies of excitation, different soil and rock parameters, and different rock-socketed lengths. The dynamic stiffness of monopile increases, while the radiative damping decreases as rock-socketed depth increases. When the weathering degree of rock increases, the dynamic stiffness of the monopile decreases, while the radiative damping increases.


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):  
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.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 7579
Author(s):  
Zhaoyao Wang ◽  
Ruigeng Hu ◽  
Hao Leng ◽  
Hongjun Liu ◽  
Yifan Bai ◽  
...  

The displacement of monopile supporting offshore wind turbines needs to be strictly controlled, and the influence of local scour can not be ignored. Using p–y curves to simulate the pile–soil interaction and the finite difference method to calculate iteratively, a numerical frame for analysis of lateral loaded pile was discussed and then verified. On the basis of the field data from Dafeng Offshore Wind Farm in Jiangsu Province, the local scour characteristics of large diameter monopile were concluded, and a new method of considering scour effect applicable to large diameter monopile was put forward. The results show that, for scour of large diameter monopiles, there was no obvious scour pit, but local erosion and deposition. Under the test conditions, the displacement errors between the proposed and traditional method were 46.4%. By the proposed method, the p–y curves of monopile considering the scour effect were obtained through ABAQUS, and the deformation of large diameter monopile under scour was analyzed by the proposed frame. The results show that, with the increase of scour depth, the horizontal displacement of the pile head increases nonlinearly, the depth of rotation point moves downward, and both of the changes are related to the load level. Under the test conditions, the horizontal displacement of the pile head after scour could reach 1.4~3.6 times of that before scour. Finally, for different pile parameters, the pile head displacement was compared, and further, the susceptibility to scour was quantified by a proposed concept of scour sensitivity. The analysis indicates that increasing pile length is a more reasonable way than pile diameter and wall thickness to limit the scour effect on the displacement of large diameter pile.


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.


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