scholarly journals Fatigue Assessment of Moorings for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines by Advanced Spectral Analysis Methods

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Piscopo ◽  
Antonio Scamardella ◽  
Giovanni Battista Rossi ◽  
Francesco Crenna ◽  
Marta Berardengo

The fatigue assessment of mooring lines for floating offshore wind turbines represents a challenging issue not only for the reliable design of the stationkeeping system but also for the economic impact on the installation and maintenance costs over the entire lifetime of the offshore wind farm. After a brief review about the state-of-art, the nonlinear time-domain hydrodynamic model of floating offshore wind turbines moored by chain cables is discussed. Subsequently, the assessment of the fatigue damage in the mooring lines is outlined, focusing on the combined-spectrum approach. The relevant fatigue parameters, due to the low- and wave-frequency components of the stress process, are estimated by two different methods. The former is based on the time-domain analysis of the filtered stress process time history. The latter, instead, is based on the spectral analysis of the stress process by two advanced methods, namely the Welch and Thomson ones. Subsequently, a benchmark study is performed, assuming as reference floating offshore wind turbine the OC4-DeepCWind semisubmersible platform, equipped with the 5 MW NREL wind turbine. The cumulative fatigue damage is determined for eight load conditions, including both power production and parked wind turbine situations. A comparative analysis between time-domain and spectral analysis methods is also performed. Current results clearly show that the endorsement of advanced spectral analysis methods can be helpful to improve the reliability of the fatigue life assessment of mooring lines.

Author(s):  
H. K. Jang ◽  
H. C. Kim ◽  
M. H. Kim ◽  
K. H. Kim

Numerical tools for a single floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) have been developed by a number of researchers, while the investigation of multi-unit floating offshore wind turbines (MUFOWT) has rarely been performed. Recently, a numerical simulator was developed by TAMU to analyze the coupled dynamics of MUFOWT including multi-rotor-floater-mooring coupled effects. In the present study, the behavior of MUFOWT in time domain is described through the comparison of two load cases in maximum operational and survival conditions. A semi-submersible floater with four 2MW wind turbines, moored by eight mooring lines is selected as an example. The combination of irregular random waves, steady currents and dynamic turbulent winds are applied as environmental loads. As a result, the global motion and kinetic responses of the system are assessed in time domain. Kane’s dynamic theory is employed to formulate the global coupled dynamic equation of the whole system. The coupling terms are carefully considered to address the interactions among multiple turbines. This newly developed tool will be helpful in the future to evaluate the performance of MUFOWT under diverse environmental scenarios. In the present study, the aerodynamic interactions among multiple turbines including wake/array effect are not considered due to the complexity and uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 11665
Author(s):  
Shi Liu ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Chao Wang ◽  
Yuangang Tu

Spar-type floating offshore wind turbines commonly vibrate excessively when under the coupling impact of wind and wave. The wind turbine vibration can be controlled by developing its mooring system. Thus, this study proposes a novel mooring system for the spar-type floating offshore wind turbine. The proposed mooring system has six mooring lines, which are divided into three groups, with two mooring lines in the same group being connected to the same fairlead. Subsequently, the effects of the included angle between the two mooring lines on the mooring-system’s performance are investigated. Then, these six mooring lines are connected to six independent fairleads for comparison. FAST is utilized to calculate wind turbine dynamic response. Wind turbine surge, pitch, and yaw movements are presented and analyzed in time and frequency domains to quantitatively evaluate the performances of the proposed mooring systems. Compared with the mooring system with six fairleads, the mooring system with three fairleads performed better. When the included angle was 40°, surge, pitch, and yaw movement amplitudes of the wind turbine reduced by 39.51%, 6.8%, and 12.34%, respectively, when under regular waves; they reduced by 56.08%, 25.00%, and 47.5%, respectively, when under irregular waves. Thus, the mooring system with three fairleads and 40° included angle is recommended.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eloi Daniel de Araujo Neto ◽  
William Rodriguez ◽  
Fabr\xedcio Nogueira Corr\xeaa ◽  
Beatriz De Souza Leite Pires De Lima ◽  
Breno Pinheiro Jacob ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Hsien Lin ◽  
Shin-Hung Kao ◽  
Cheng-Hao Yang

This study aims to develop a modularized simulation system to estimate dynamic responses of floating Offshore Wind Turbines (OWTs) based on the concepts of spar buoy and Tension Leg Platform (TLP) corresponding with two typical mooring lines. The modular system consists of the hydrodynamic simulator based the Cummins time domain equation, the Boundary Element Method (BEM) solver based on the 3D source distribution method, and an open-source visualization software ParaView to analyze the interaction between floating OWTs and waves. In order to realize the effects of mooring loads on the floating OWTs, the stiffness and damping matrices are applied to the quasi-static mooring system. The Response Amplitude Operators (RAOs) are compared between our predicted results and other published data to verify the modularized simulation system and understand the influence of mooring load on the motion responses in regular or irregular waves. It is also demonstrated that the quasi-static mooring system is applicable to different types of mooring lines as well as determining real-time motion responses. Eventually, wave load components at the resonance frequencies of different motion modes for selected floating OWTs would be present in the time domain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 543
Author(s):  
Jiawen Li ◽  
Jingyu Bian ◽  
Yuxiang Ma ◽  
Yichen Jiang

A typhoon is a restrictive factor in the development of floating wind power in China. However, the influences of multistage typhoon wind and waves on offshore wind turbines have not yet been studied. Based on Typhoon Mangkhut, in this study, the characteristics of the motion response and structural loads of an offshore wind turbine are investigated during the travel process. For this purpose, a framework is established and verified for investigating the typhoon-induced effects of offshore wind turbines, including a multistage typhoon wave field and a coupled dynamic model of offshore wind turbines. On this basis, the motion response and structural loads of different stages are calculated and analyzed systematically. The results show that the maximum response does not exactly correspond to the maximum wave or wind stage. Considering only the maximum wave height or wind speed may underestimate the motion response during the traveling process of the typhoon, which has problems in guiding the anti-typhoon design of offshore wind turbines. In addition, the coupling motion between the floating foundation and turbine should be considered in the safety evaluation of the floating offshore wind turbine under typhoon conditions.


Fluids ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 200
Author(s):  
Dimitris I. Manolas ◽  
Vasilis A. Riziotis ◽  
George P. Papadakis ◽  
Spyros G. Voutsinas

A fully coupled hydro-servo-aero-elastic simulator for the analysis of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) is presented. All physical aspects are addressed, and the corresponding equations are concurrently solved within the same computational framework, taking into account the wind and wave excitations, the aerodynamic response of the rotor, the hydrodynamic response of the floater, the structural dynamics of the turbine-floater-mooring lines assembly and finally the control system of the wind turbine. The components of the complex multi-physics system of a FOWT interact with each other in an implicitly coupled manner leading to a holistic type of modeling. Different modeling options, of varying fidelity and computational cost, are made available with respect to rotor aerodynamics, hydrodynamic loading of the floater and mooring system dynamics that allow for timely routine certification simulations, but also for computationally intense simulations of less conventional operating states. Structural dynamics is based on nonlinear multibody analysis that allows reproducing the large rigid body motions undergone by the FOWT, as well as large deflections and rotations of the highly flexible blades. The paper includes the description of the main physical models, of the interaction and solution strategy and representative results. Verification is carried out by comparing with other state-of-art tools that participated in the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation (OC4) IEA Annex, while the advanced simulation capabilities are demonstrated in the case of half-wake interaction of floating wind turbines by employing the free-wake aerodynamic method.


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):  
Yajun Ren ◽  
Vengatesan Venugopal

Abstract The complex dynamic characteristics of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) have raised wider consideration, as they are likely to experience harsher environments and higher instabilities than the bottom fixed offshore wind turbines. Safer design of a mooring system is critical for floating offshore wind turbine structures for station keeping. Failure of mooring lines may lead to further destruction, such as significant changes to the platform’s location and possible collisions with a neighbouring platform and eventually complete loss of the turbine structure may occur. The present study focuses on the dynamic responses of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)’s OC3-Hywind spar type floating platform with a NREL offshore 5-MW baseline wind turbine under failed mooring conditions using the fully coupled numerical simulation tool FAST. The platform motions in surge, heave and pitch under multiple scenarios are calculated in time-domain. The results describing the FOWT motions in the form of response amplitude operators (RAOs) and spectral densities are presented and discussed in detail. The results indicate that the loss of the mooring system firstly leads to longdistance drift and changes in platform motions. The natural frequencies and the energy contents of the platform motion, the RAOs of the floating structures are affected by the mooring failure to different degrees.


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