Hydrodynamic Investigation on Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Platform Integrated with Porous Shell

Abstract

As the siting of wind turbines increasingly transitions from shallow water to offshore deep-water locations, improving the platform stability of floating offshore wind turbines is becoming a growing concern. By coupling a porous shell commonly used in traditional marine structures, with a FOWT (floating wind turbine platform), a new spar-buoy with a porous shell was designed. A numerical model investigating the coupling effect of the aero-hydro-mooring system is developed, and the results of the motion response are compared with the OC3-Hywind spar. The motion response of the two platforms was simulated in the time-domain with the incident wave period varied in the range of 5~22 s. The exciting wave force with added mass and radiation damping of the spar with the porous shell is compared with the OC3-Hywind spar. The results demonstrate that the motion response amplitude of the spar with the porous shell decreases in all three main motion freedoms (i.e., surge, heave and pitch, etc.), among which the heave motions are most significantly attenuated. The study shows that the coupling of porous shells with a floating platform to achieve the reduced motion responses is feasible and can be an innovative structure for the development of deep-sea offshore floating wind turbines.

Integrated System of Semi-submersible Offshore Wind Turbine Foundation and Porous Shells

“…Specifically, a single incident wave height with a range of different frequencies and steady-state wind speeds is selected. Yao et al (2023) published a study on porous shells integrated with the OC3-HyWind platform system. They considered the influence of a porous shell on the platform motion response and hydrodynamic coefficients and found improvements in the motion characteristics in the heave degree of freedom (DOF) due to the porous shells.…”

“…Zhang et al (2020b) studied the hydrodynamic characteristics of three different types of semi-submersible platforms (OC4-DeepCwind, V-shaped semi-submersible, and braceless semi-submersible) in water depths of 100 and 200 m. They also considered and compared the effect of drag on the motion response of the platforms. Wave load-reducing porous shells were incorporated in this study into the design of an OC4-DeepCwind platform, thereby extending Yao et al (2023).…”

“…Complex coupled effects are produced by the application of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads and are processed through the synergistic integration of the AeroDyn, MoorDyn, ANSYS AQWA, and OpenFAST © software. Previous work extensively described the coupled calculation method, and the reader is directed to an earlier publication for further details of the coupled dynamic analysis process (Yao et al, 2023).…”