There are global efforts in the offshore wind community to develop reliable floating wind turbine technologies that are capable of exploiting the abundant deepwater wind resource. These efforts require validated numerical simulation tools to predict the coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic behavior of such systems. To date, little has been done in the public domain to validate floating wind turbine simulation tools. This work begins to address this problem by presenting the validation of a model constructed in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) floating wind turbine simulator FAST with 1/50th-scale model test data for a semi-submersible floating wind turbine system. The test was conducted by the University of Maine DeepCwind program at Maritime Research Institute Netherlands' offshore wind/wave basin, located in the Netherlands. The floating wind turbine used in the tests was a 1/50th-scale model of the NREL 5-MW horizontal-axis reference wind turbine with a 126 m rotor diameter. This turbine was mounted to the DeepCwind semi-submersible floating platform. This paper first outlines the details of the floating system studied, including the wind turbine, tower, platform, and mooring components. Subsequently, the calibration procedures used for tuning the FAST floating wind turbine model are discussed. Following this calibration, comparisons of FAST predictions and test data are presented that focus on system global and structural response resulting from aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads. The results indicate that FAST captures many of the pertinent physics in the coupled floating wind turbine dynamics problem. In addition, the results highlight potential areas of improvement for both FAST and experimentation procedures to ensure accurate numerical modeling of floating wind turbine systems.
This paper introduces a lumped-mass mooring line model and validates it against scale-model floating offshore wind turbine test data. The mooring model incorporates axial elasticity, hydrodynamic loading via Morison's equation, and bottom contact. It neglects bending and torsional stiffnesses
Reference wind turbines are an important component to the wind energy sector. They serve as publicly available benchmarks that can be openly used to explore new technologies and designs as well as aid in facilitating collaborative efforts between researchers and industry. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) 15-megawatt (MW) reference wind turbine was released and currently represents the largest publicly available reference machine (Gaertner et al. 2020). The size of the IEA 15-MW reference turbine mirrors the wind industry's trend of offshore machines with larger power ratings. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's "2018 Offshore Wind Technologies Market Report" and the American Wind Energy Association, significant development has occurred in the past few years that highlights the opportunity for targeted research investment in offshore wind (Musial et al. 2019). Several states including Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland have enacted new policies or bolstered their existing policies to support the development of over 4,000 MW of offshore wind energy. Looking to the near future, the U.S. offshore wind project development pipeline includes 25,824 MW of potential installed capacity (Musial et al. 2019). Though the total U.S. offshore wind energy potential is more than twice what the entire country currently uses, nearly 60% of the U.S .offshore wind resource is located in deep water, requiring floating foundation technologies (Schwartz et al. 2010). In most commercial wind farms in Europe, and more recently the United States, offshore wind turbines are supported on monopoles in water depths up to 30 meters (m) and steel jacket structures from 25 m to about 50 m. In water depths over 50 m, where a majority of the U.S. offshore wind power potential lies, the cost of jacket foundations becomes prohibitively expensive, requiring the use of floating offshore wind turbine technologies. This report serves as an addendum to "IEA Wind TCP Task 37: Definition of the IEA Wind 15-Megawatt Offshore Reference Wind Turbine" (Gaertner et al. 2020) and defines the University of Maine (UMaine) VolturnUS-S reference floating offshore wind turbine semisubmersible, designed to support the IEA 15-MW reference wind turbine. The design and arrangement described in this report are intended to generically represent future floating offshore wind turbine technology. In addition to the floating platform, this report also details the other floating-specific components of the floating offshore wind turbine including the mooring system, tower, and turbine controller.
Scale-model wave basin testing is often employed in the development and validation oflarge-scale offshore vessels and structures by the oil and gas, military, and marine industries. A basin-model test requires less time, resources, and risk than a full-scale test, while providing real and accurate data for numerical simulator validation. As the development of floating wind turbine technology progresses in order to capture the vast deepwater wind energy resource, it is clear that model testing will be essential for the economical and efficient advancement of this technology. However, the scale model testing of floating wind turbines requires accurate simulation of the wind and wave environments, structural flexibility, and wind turbine aerodynamics and thus requires a comprehensive scaling methodology. This paper presents a unified methodology for Froude scale model testing of floating wind turbines under combined wind and wave loading. First, an overview of the scaling relationships employed for the environment, floater, and wind turbine are presented. Aftemwd, a discussion is presented concerning suggested methods for manufacturing a high-quality, low-turbulence Froude scale wind environment in a wave basin to facilitate simultaneous application of wind and waves to the model. Subsequently, the difficulties of scaling the highly Reynolds number-dependent wind turbine aerodynamics is presented in addition to methods for tailoring the turbine and wind characteristics to best emulate the full-scale condition. Lastly, the scaling methodology is demonstrated using results from 1150th-scale floating wind turbine testing performed at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) Offshore Basin. The model test campaign investigated the response of the 126 -m rotor diameter National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) horizontal axis wind turbine atop three floating platforms: a tension-leg platform, a spar-buoy, and a semisubmersible. The results highlight the methodology's strengths and weaknesses for simulating full-scale global response of floating wind turbine systems.In order to establish a scaling methodology, a particular set of rules and constraints must be selected. The suggested scaling Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering
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