Influence of second order wave excitation loads on coupled response of an offshore floating wind turbine

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated analysis about dynamic performance of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) OC4 DeepCwind with semi-submersible platform under real sea environment. The emphasis of this paper is to investigate how the wave mean drift force and slow-drift wave excitation load (Quadratic transfer function, namely QTF) influence the platform motions, mooring line tension and tower base bending moments. Second order potential theory is being used for computing linear and nonlinear wave effects, including first order wave force, mean drift force and slow-drift excitation loads. Morison model is utilized to account the viscous effect from fluid. This approach considers floating wind turbine as an integrated coupled system. Two time-domain solvers, SIMA (SIMO/RIFLEX/AERODYN) and FAST are being chosen to analyze the global response of the integrated coupled system under small, moderate and severe sea condition. Results show that second order mean drift force and slow-drift force will drift the floater away along wave propagation direction. At the same time, slow-drift force has larger effect than mean drift force. Also tension of the mooring line at fairlead and tower base loads are increased accordingly in all sea conditions under investigation.

Keywords

• Floating offshore wind turbine
• Mean drift force
• Slow-drift wave excitation loads
• QTF
• OC4 DeepCwind