Session: 08-04-01 FSI

Paper Number: 79016

79016 - A Coupled Wave-Current-Structure Study for a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Platform 

Renewable energy has been developing rapidly these years, due to the urgent goals of energy conservation and emission reduction. In wind energy industry, the installed capacity increases rapidly, especially in Asia and Europe (Stehly et al., 2020). To meet the emerging demands of the international energy market, larger wind turbines and generators are needed, from 10 MW to 15MW or even more. The installation sites are gradually changed, from mostly on land to nearshore, and offshore. The offshore platform to support the wind turbine is of great concern for a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT), bringing in more challenges in safety and reliability (Henderson and Witcher, 2010).

In the present study, the influence of an ocean condition, in combination of wave and current, on the dynamic responses of an SS-semi-submersible platform is numerically studied, in comparison with the experimental data (Gonçalves et al., 2020). This is inspired by the recent observations that the presence of water current usually induces a vortex-induced vibration (VIV) phenomenon of a platform, while wave often leads to a large inertia force on it. The integration of wave and current may further cause a more complex flow field around the structure than those only wave or current presents. This becomes especially prominent for the SS platforms with multiple columns. Such VIV is not desirable considering its impact on the offshore structure damage due to the VIV-induced resonance. When the FOWT is installed in shallow water, the wave-current interaction becomes more important than a system in the deep sea.

The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) method will be adopted to conduct a real-time simulation of the platform’s motion response. The tool is based on an open-source code library OpenFOAM (Jasak et al., 2007). The results will be validated against the experiment data conducted in a wave tank (Gonçalves et al., 2020). The fluid field around the platform and its impact on the structure motion and loading response will be studied for a wide range of wave and current conditions.

Presenting Author: Xiang Li University of Strathclyde

Authors:

Xiang Li University of Strathclyde
Qing Xiao Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering, University of Strathclyde
Rodolfo Gonçalves Ocean Space Planning Laboratory, Department of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
Christophe Peyrard Saint-Venant Hydraulics Laboratory