Structure Design and Assessment of a Floating Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbines

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.

WindCrete Fatigue Verification

WindCrete is an offshore concrete spar type platform for Wind Turbines developed at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech. The main characteristics of the platform are its monolithic configuration and the use of concrete as main material. The monolithic nature allows avoiding joints between the substructure and the tower increasing the service life of the structure. The use of concrete increases the resistance when exposed to an offshore environment but requires ensuring a full compression state along the structure to avoid cracking. Thus, the platform is post-tensioned by longitudinal tendons along its length. Adequate fatigue design is a key factor to ensure the reliability of offshore structures. Floating Offshore Wind Turbines are subjected to cyclic phenomena coming from waves, wind, rotor-induced vibrations and structural vibrations. These loads have to be considered in order to assess the fatigue life of offshore structures. Furthermore, pre-stressed concrete adds an internal load such that it avoids the presence of tension stresses at any given section, which has a positive influence on the fatigue response of the structure by increasing its fatigue resistance. An excess of compression can, however, also induce an adverse effect on the fatigue resistance of the concrete. In order to study the fatigue behaviour of WindCrete when fitted with a 5MW Wind Turbine, a Fatigue Limit State verification is performed according to the DNVGL-ST-0437 for load cases definition and FIB Model Code (2010) for fatigue structural verification. The location chosen to install WindCrete is the Gulf de Lion, at the west of the Mediteranian Sea off the coast of Catalunya with a mean wind speed above 9 m/s. The metocean conditions for design purpose are presented, which are obtained from available environmental data. A total of 458 simulation cases are performed using the NREL FAST software assuming wind and wave co-directionally, and quasi-static mooring response for Parked and Power-Production operational modes. Assuming an elastic response of the tower, the internal stresses at the tower base are obtained for all the simulations. Then, a fatigue analysis is performed at the tower base through a cumulative damage approach based on the Palmgren-Miner rule. The analysis accounted for the multiaxial stresses produced by the combination of axial, bending and tangential forces. The S-N material curves were defined according to the Model Code 2010 method, which accounts for the effect of the stress range as well as the average stress.

Large Aeroelastic Model of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine: Mechanical and Mechatronics Design

This paper deals with the mechatronic design of a large-scale wind turbine model (outdoor scaled prototype) based on the DTU 10MW. This is going to be integrated in the model of a multi-purpose floating structure to be deployed at the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) in Reggio Calabria (Italy). The floating wind turbine model is the downscaling of the full-scale structure designed within the EU H2020 Blue Growth Farm project. The structural design of the scaled wind turbine is presented, starting from the aeroelastic and aerodynamic design carried out in a previous work.

CFD Simulation of Semi-Submersible Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Under Pitch Decay Motion

The application of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code to simulate the response of a semi-submersible floating wind turbine under pitch decay motion was investigated in this study. Estimation of the natural period, the hydrodynamic damping and the flow characteristics were the main focus of this study. An extensive verification study of the simulation results was conducted to improve the confidence and reliability of the numerical simulation by the estimation of the numerical errors and uncertainties. The time series of pitch motion was plotted against model test data. In addition, the pitch period and hydrodynamic damping were calculated and compared to experimental data. Detailed flow characteristics as vorticity field and hydrodynamic pressure field on the floater surface were illustrated after post processing of the computational data. The results of the flow characteristics suggest that the heave damping plates were a major contributor to the hydrodynamic damping of this floater in pitch decay.

Global Responses and Loads Analysis of a 750-kW Semi-Submersible Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Under Extreme Environmental Conditions

A pilot floating offshore wind turbine project of Korea was proposed for installing in the East Sea of Korea. The prototype is a semisubmersible platform supporting a 750-kW wind turbine. A scaled model was tested in the basin tank of the University of Ulsan at scale ratio 1:40. The 750-kW floating offshore wind turbine was modeled by using the NREL-FAST code. Numerical results were validated by comparing with those of the test model. This paper analyzes dynamic responses and loads of the wind turbine system under extreme environmental conditions. Extreme environmental conditions based on metocean data of East Sea Korea. Extreme responses and extreme loads are important data for designing the structure of the 750 kW semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine.

Analysis of Environmental Conditions for the Conceptual Design of a 200 MW Floating Offshore Wind Farm in the East Sea, Korea

Due to global climate change, concern regarding the environment is greater than ever. Also, the energy industry is constantly developing and investing in new and renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions. Korea is planning to increase the proportion of renewable energy generation to 20% by 2030, in accordance with the 3020 renewable energy policy. This will involve 16.5 GW (34%) from wind energy, with a capacity from offshore wind energy of approximately 13 GW. Considering domestic technological wind resource potential (33.2 GW), it seems to be a sufficient target amount. However, in order to start the wind power generation business, the installation area must be analyzed for environmental information, for the evaluation of the wind resource and the early-stage concept design. Because it is difficult to conduct long-term measurements of the entire sea area, the environmental conditions are generally estimated from short-term measurement data and long-term reanalysis data. In this study, the environmental conditions of the East Sea of Korea were selected, and a comparative analysis was performed on the meteorological agency’s oceanic meteorology buoy data, ERA-5 reanalysis data obtained from ECMWF, and NASA’s MERRA-2 data. The extreme sea states of 50 years and 100 years were analyzed by extreme statistical analysis. Finally, environmental conditions required for the basic design of wind turbines were selected following IEC and DNV standards.

Condition Monitoring of Wind Turbine Drivetrain Bearings

The current pace of renewable energy development around the world is unprecedented, with offshore wind in particular proving to be an extremely valuable and reliable energy source. The global installed capacity of offshore wind turbines by the end of 2022 is expected to reach the 46.4 GW, among which 33.9 GW in Europe. Costs are critical for the future success of the offshore wind sector. The industry is pushing hard to make cost reductions to show that offshore wind is economically comparable to conventional fossil fuels. Efficiencies in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) offer potential to achieve significant cost savings as it accounts for around 20%–30% of overall offshore wind farm costs. One of the most critical and rather complex assembly of onshore, offshore and floating wind turbines is the gearbox. Gearboxes are designed to last till the end of the lifetime of the asset, according to the IEC 61400-4 standards. On the other hand, a recent study over approximately 350 offshore wind turbines indicate that gearboxes might have to be replaced as early as 6.5 years. Therefore sensing and condition monitoring systems for onshore, offshore and floating wind turbines are needed in order to obtain reliable information on the state and condition of different critical parts, focusing towards the detection and/or prediction of damage before it reaches a critical stage. The development and use of such technologies will allow companies to schedule actions at the right time, and thus will help reducing the costs of operation and maintenance, resulting in an increase of wind energy at a competitive price and thus strengthening productivity of the wind energy sector. At the academic level a plethora of methodologies have been proposed during the last decades for the analysis of vibration signatures focusing towards early and accurate fault detection with limited false alarms and missed detections. Among others, Envelope Analysis is one of the most important methodologies, where an envelope of the vibration signal is estimated, usually after filtering around a selected frequency band excited by impacts due to the faults. Different tools, such as Kurtogram, have been proposed in order to accurately select the optimum filter parameters (center frequency and bandwidth). Cyclostationary Analysis and corresponding methodologies, i.e. the Cyclic Spectral Correlation and the Cyclic Spectral Coherence, have been proved as powerful tools for condition monitoring. On the other hand the application, test and evaluation of such tools on general industrial cases is still rather limited. Therefore the main aim of this paper is the application and evaluation of advanced diagnostic techniques and diagnostic indicators, including the Enhanced Envelope Spectrum and the Spectral Flatness on real world vibration data collected from vibration sensors on gearboxes in multiple wind turbines over an extended period of time of nearly four years. The diagnostic indicators are compared with classical statistic time and frequency indicators, i.e. Kurtosis, Crest Factor etc. and their effectiveness is evaluated based on the successful detection of two failure events.

Simulation of an Offshore Wind Turbine Using a Weakly-Compressible CFD Solver Coupled With a Blade Element Turbine Model

The present study addresses the first steps of development and validation of a coupled CFD-BE (Blade Element) simulation tool dedicated to offshore wind turbine farm modelling. The CFD part is performed using a weakly-compressible solver (WCCH). The turbine is taken into account using FAST (from NREL) and its effects are imposed into the fluid domain through an actuator line model. The first part of this paper is dedicated to the presentation of the WCCH solver and its coupling with the aero-elastic modules from FAST. In a second part, for validation purposes, comparisons between FAST and the WCCH-FAST coupling are presented and discussed. Finally, a discussion on the performances, advantages and limitations of the formulation proposed is provided.

Time Domain Fatigue Life Analysis of Offshore Jacket Structure

Offshore wind system encountered wind, wave, current, soil, and other environmental loads. The support structure is randomly loaded for a long time, which is more likely to cause fatigue damage. In this paper, the NREL 5MW wind turbine and OC4 jacket support structure is selected to perform the time domain fatigue analysis. Commercial software Bladed and SACS are used to perform the required structural responses and fatigue strength calculations. The Stress Concentration Factors (SCF) and S-N curves for the stress calculations of tubular joints are adopted based on the recommendation of DNV GL guidelines. The magnitude of the stress variation range and the corresponding number of counts are obtained by using the rain-flow counting algorithm. Finally, the Palmgren-Miner’s rule is adopted to calculate the cumulative damage ratio and the fatigue life can then be estimated. Fatigue damage ratio and structural fatigue life of each joint during 20 years of operation period are evaluated.

Dynamic Load Response Analysis on Yaw Bearing of Wind Turbine to Turbulent Wind

Wind turbines are subjected to dynamic loads during their service life. The yaw bearing is an important part which also bears these loads. In this study, a series of 5-megawatt (MW) wind turbines are analyzed for their dynamic response under normal operating conditions while exposed to turbulent wind. These models are Onshore, Monopile, ITI Barge, Spar, Tension-Leg Platform (TLP), Semi-Submerisible. TurbSim is used to prescribe turbulent-wind inflow and a time domain FAST code is applied in order to conduct the Aero-Hydro-Servo-Elastic coupled analysis on the yaw loads of the wind turbines. Three different average wind velocities are examined to compare the load response of the wind turbine to turbulent wind on the yaw bearing. A Gumbel distribution coupled maximum likelihood method is used to predict ultimate loads. And the rain flow counting algorithm, the linear cumulative damage law and S-N curve theory are used to predict the damage equivalent load. The results should aid the fatigue design of yaw bearing and the yaw control system according to different wind turbine design.