scholarly journals Development of a Multi-Objective Optimization Tool for Screening Designs of Taut Synthetic Mooring Systems to Minimize Mooring Component Cost and Footprint

Modelling ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-752
Author(s):  
William West ◽  
Andrew Goupee ◽  
Spencer Hallowell ◽  
Anthony Viselli

As the offshore wind industry develops, more lease sites in the intermediate water depth (50–85 m) are being released to developers. In these water depths floating wind turbines with chain catenary systems and fixed-bottom turbines with jacketed structures become cost prohibitive. As such, industry and researchers have shifted focus to floating turbines with taut or semi-taut synthetic rope mooring systems. In addition to reducing the cost of the mooring systems, synthetic systems can also reduce the footprint compared to a chain catenary system which frees areas around the turbine for other maritime uses such as commercial fishing. Both the mooring systems component cost and footprint are pertinent design criteria that lend themselves naturally to a multi-objective optimization routine. In this paper a new approach for efficiently screening the design space for plausible mooring systems that balance component cost and footprint using a multi-objective genetic algorithm is presented. This method uses a tiered-constraint method to avoid performing computationally expensive time domain simulations of mooring system designs that are infeasible. Performance metrics for assessing the constraints of candidate designs are performed using open-source software such as Mooring Analysis Program (MAP++), OpenFAST and MoorDyn. A case study is presented providing a Pareto-optimal design front for a taut synthetic mooring system of a 6-MW floating offshore wind turbine.

Author(s):  
Jiawen Li ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Jiali Du ◽  
Yichen Jiang

Abstract This paper presents a parametric design study of the mooring system for a floating offshore wind turbine. We selected the OC4 DeepCwind semisubmersible floating wind turbine as the reference structure. The design water depth was 50 m, which was the transition area between the shallow and deep waters. For the floating wind turbine working in this water area, the restoring forces and moments provided by the mooring lines were significantly affected by the heave motion amplitude of the platform. Thus, the mooring design for the wind turbine in this working depth was different from the deep-water catenary mooring system. In this study, the chosen design parameters were declination angle, fairlead position, mooring line length, environmental load direction, and mooring line number. We conducted fully coupled aero-hydro dynamic simulations of the floating wind turbine system in the time domain to investigate the influences of different mooring configurations on the platform motion and the mooring tension. We evaluated both survival and accidental conditions to analyze the mooring safety under typhoon and mooring fail conditions. On the basis of the simulation results, this study made several design recommendations for the mooring configuration for floating wind turbines in intermediate water depth applied in China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yane Li ◽  
Conghuan Le ◽  
Hongyan Ding ◽  
Puyang Zhang ◽  
Jian Zhang

The paper discusses the effects of mooring configurations on the dynamic response of a submerged floating offshore wind turbine (SFOWT) for intermediate water depths. A coupled dynamic model of a wind turbine-tower-floating platform-mooring system is established, and the dynamic response of the platform, tensions in mooring lines, and bending moment at the tower base and blade root under four different mooring configurations are checked. A well-stabilized configuration (i.e., four vertical lines and 12 diagonal lines with an inclination angle of 30°) is selected to study the coupled dynamic responses of SFOWT with broken mooring lines, and in order to keep the safety of SFOWT under extreme sea-states, the pretension of the vertical mooring line has to increase from 1800–2780 kN. Results show that the optimized mooring system can provide larger restoring force, and the SFOWT has a smaller movement response under extreme sea-states; when the mooring lines in the upwind wave direction are broken, an increased motion response of the platform will be caused. However, there is no slack in the remaining mooring lines, and the SFOWT still has enough stability.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conghuan Le ◽  
Yane Li ◽  
Hongyan Ding

A submerged floating offshore wind turbine (SFOWT) is proposed for intermediate water depth (50–200 m). An aero-hydro-servo-elastic-mooring coupled dynamic analysis was carried out to investigate the coupled dynamic response of the SFOWT under different mooring conditions subjected to combined turbulent wind and irregular wave environments. The effects of different parameters, namely, the tether length, pretension and the tether failure, on the performance of SFOWT were investigated. It is found that the tether length has significant effects on the motion responses of the surge, heave, pitch and yaw but has little effects on the tower fore-aft displacements and the tether tensions. The increased pretension can result in the increase of the natural frequencies of surge, heave and yaw significantly. The influence of tether failure on the SFOWT performance was investigated by comparing the responses with those of the intact mooring system. The results show that the SFOWT with a broken tether still has a good performance in the operational condition.


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Chao Yu ◽  
Xiangyao Xue ◽  
Kui Shi ◽  
Mingzhen Shao

This paper presents a method for optimizing wavy plate-fin heat exchangers accurately and efficiently. It combines CFD simulation, Radical Basis Functions (RBF) with multi-objective optimization to improve the performance. The optimization of the Colburn factor j and the friction coefficient f is regarded as a multi-objective optimization problem, due to the existence of two contradictory goals. The approximation model was obtained by Radical Basis Functions, and the shape of the heat exchanger was optimized by multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA). The optimization results showed that j increased by 17.62% and f decreased by 20.76%, indicating that the heat exchange efficiency was significantly enhanced and the fluid structure resistance reduced. Then, from the aspects of field synergy and tubulence energy, the performance advantage of the optimized structure was further confirmed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 307 ◽  
pp. 161-165
Author(s):  
Hai Jin ◽  
Jin Fa Xie

A multi-objective genetic algorithm is applied into the layout optimization of tracked self-moving power. The layout optimization mathematical model was set up. Then introduced the basic principles of NSGA-Ⅱ, which is a Pareto multi-objective optimization algorithm. Finally, NSGA-Ⅱwas presented to solve the layout problem. The algorithm was proved to be effective by some practical examples. The results showed that the algorithm can spread toward the whole Pareto front, and provide many reasonable solutions once for all.


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.


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.


Author(s):  
Magnus J. Harrold ◽  
Philipp R. Thies ◽  
Lars Johanning ◽  
David Newsam ◽  
Michael Checkley ◽  
...  

The mooring system for a floating offshore wind turbine ensures that the platform stays within pre-defined station keeping limits during operation, while it provides sufficient restraining forces in storm events to guarantee survival. This presents a challenge during the design process, since the cost of the mooring system is proportional to the peak loads, i.e. those that occur infrequently in extreme conditions. Mooring designs are governed by extreme and fatigue loads which determine the required Minimum Breaking Load (MBL) of the system. If uncertainties in the environmental loading or hydrodynamic coupled response exist, additional safety factors are required. This paper explores the application of a hydraulic based mooring system that enables a variable, non-linear line stiffness characteristic that cannot be achieved with conventional designs. This non-linear load-response behavior could function like a ‘shock absorber’ in the mooring system, and thus reduce the line tensions, enabling a more efficient mooring system that necessitates a lower MBL and thus lower cost. These claims are evaluated through numerical modelling of the NREL OC3 spar buoy and OC4 semi-submersible offshore wind platforms using the FAST-OrcaFlex interface. The simulations compare the dynamics with and without the inclusion of the hydraulic mooring component. The results suggest that mean mooring line loads can be reduced in the region of 9–17% through a combination of lower static and dynamic loads, while the peak loads observed in extreme conditions were reduced by 17–18%. These load reductions, however, come at the expense of some additional platform motion. The paper also provides an outlook to an upcoming physical test campaign that will aim to better understand the performance and reliability of the mooring component, which will provide the necessary evidence to support these load reduction claims.


Author(s):  
Eiji Hirokawa ◽  
Hideyuki Suzuki ◽  
Shinichiro Hirabayashi ◽  
Minon Muratake

In off-shore wind turbine, it is difficult to determine the risk of accident caused by the mooring destruction through experiment. In this paper, the authors discuss the risk, with the case of a drifting ship wanders into the wind farm. In the design of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT), drift of a FOWT is considered as a serious failure mode and the mooring system must be designed to avoid the failure. The failure of mooring line is not initiated just by extreme environmental load but can be initiated by collision with a drifting ship, which enters the wind farm. This phenomenon is difficult to investigate by a tank experiment. So far, little knowledge exists about the phenomenon. In this research, a simulator to reproduce the collision process of a FOWT and a drift ship and a progressive drift of FOWTs in a wind farm was developed. Using this simulator and statistics of drift incidents of a ship, a procedure to evaluate risk of progressive drifts in a wind farm was established. In that case, second accident that a wind turbine which has started drifting caused by the drifting ship collides with one another wind turbine is expected. As a result, the risk mainly depends on the risk of drifting caused by a large displaced ship. In addition, the risk partly depends on the arrangement of wind farm.


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