Session: 09-01-06 Wind Energy: Aero-hydrodynamics 6

Paper Number: 128589

128589 - On the Potential Impact of Climate Change on Design of Offshore Wind Turbines 

Offshore structures must be designed with adequate safety and reliability, and their designs must be acceptable from an environmental and economic point of view. Use of representative environmental data and models is crucial for accurate assessment of load and responses. In this connection, it is important to use the state-of-the-art knowledge about meteorological (temperature, pressure, wind) and oceanographic (waves, current) conditions for the design of offshore wind turbines. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jointly established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), there has been some evidence on the link between man-made global warming and extreme weather events reported in the past years. For instance, the trend shows that there has been an increase in significant wave height from the middle of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first century in the northern hemisphere winter in high latitudes in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific. Another example is the possible increase in marine growth due to warmer oceans that may increase loads on offshore structures in some ocean regions, e.g., the Baltic Sea. There are some growing concerns that how and to what degree the climate change and in particular the occurrence of extreme weather events will impact on future design of offshore structures and operation.

The present study shortly reviews the observation and projection of climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond in view of design requirements. Emphasis is on meteorological and oceanographic conditions and their potential implications on safe design and operations of offshore wind turbines. A practical example of the application of structural reliability techniques to the analysis of an offshore wind turbine structure is presented. The definition of the ULS failure event is discussed, and the various sources of uncertainty influencing failure are described. The use of extreme value distributions to evaluate the failure probability for different reference periods is demonstrated.

Presenting Author: Hadi Amlashi University of South-Eastern Norway

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Hadi Amlashi, PhD in Marine Structures, is an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering at the University of South-Eastern Norway. His main specialties cover Buckling, Ultimate Strength and Fatigue Limit State Design, Advanced Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis, Structural Reliability Analysis and Probabilistic Code Calibration. He has contributed to many research projects developing advanced numerical models for various structural systems and semi-probabilistic design format and has vast amount of engineering experiences from industry with the application in various fields ranging from fixed and floating offshore and marine structures to the subsea oil and gas operation, transportation, and exploration systems. Offshore renewable energy is among his research interests. He has published in several peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings in marine and offshore structures and contributed in many inhouse design practices in the industry.

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