Establishing a fully coupled CFD analysis tool for floating offshore wind turbines

An accurate study of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) system requires 16 interdisciplinary knowledge about wind turbine aerodynamics, floating platform 17 hydrodynamics and mooring line dynamics, as well as interaction between these 18 discipline areas. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) provides a new means of 19 analysing a fully coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) system in a detailed manner. 20 In this paper, a numerical tool based on the open source CFD toolbox OpenFOAM for 21 application to FOWTs will be described. Various benchmark cases are first modelled 22 to demonstrate the capability of the tool. The OC4 DeepCWind semi-submersible 23 FOWT model is then investigated under different operating conditions. 24 With this tool, the effects of the dynamic motions of the floating platform on the wind 25 turbine aerodynamic performance and the impact of the wind turbine aerodynamics 26 on the behaviour of the floating platform and on the mooring system responses are 27 examined. The present results provide quantitative information of three-dimensional 28 FSI that may complement related experimental studies. In addition, CFD modelling 29 enables the detailed quantitative analysis of the wind turbine flow field, the pressure 30 distribution along blades and their effects on the wind turbine aerodynamics and the 31 hydrodynamics of the floating structure, which is difficult to carry out experimentally

Development of the deepwater turbine installation-floating concept

Floating offshore wind turbine technology is progressing from the research stages to commercial projects. It will be an increasing source of renewable energy over the next few years. The better quality of the wind resource and environmental considerations will encourage developers further offshore, if commercially viable. This research work presents the initial development of the Deep Turbine Installation-Floating (DTI-F) concept. The DTI-F concept is a hybrid spar buoy-based floating offshore substructure capable of supporting a 7 MW wind turbine with the uniqueness of being able to raise and lower the tower and nacelle, which simplifies construction, installation, maintenance, and de-commissioning. The research proceeds in three parts; the first part is a compilation of the background of floating wind turbines and the DTI-F concept. A novel construction method and the installation and assembly processes are outlined, as well as the parametric approach used to perform the preliminary design of the floater. The second part presents both the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic modelling techniques applied during this research. It covers the aeroelastic analysis of the Levenmouth wind turbine (WT) and the experimental and numerical hydrodynamic analysis of the DTI-F concept holding the Levenmouth WT. The Levenmouth (Samsung Heavy Industries - S7.0-171) offshore wind turbine owned by the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (ORE Catapult) is a real, operating demonstration wind turbine. The aeroelastic model of the Levenmouth WT has provided the load-matrix of a real, operating seven megawatts WT. The results of the aeroelastic analysis have been integrated parametrically into the design of the DTI-F floater. The hydrodynamic analysis of the floating system undertaken for this research is based on experimental and numerical modelling work. A 1:45 Froude scale model of the DTI-F wind concept was tested using three different mooring configurations: i) three mooring lines, ii) four mooring lines, and iii) three mooring lines with a delta connection. Free decay and stiffness decay tests were carried out together with regular and irregular wave tests. The numerical study comprises diffraction analysis (ANSYS AQWA) and time-domain modelling (OrcaFlex) of the system, and it has been validated against the aforementioned experimental results. The outcome of this research has demonstrated the good practice of the DTI-F concept and has increased the Technology Readiness Level of the studied concept from 1 to 3 while proving that the DTI-F concept has a high degree of technical feasibility. The concluding part of the research provides a discussion of the overall work along with conclusions, recommendations, and future work suggestions

[Report of] Specialist Committee V.4: ocean, wind and wave energy utilization

The committee's mandate was :Concern for structural design of ocean energy utilization devices, such as offshore wind turbines, support structures and fixed or floating wave and tidal energy converters. Attention shall be given to the interaction between the load and the structural response and shall include due consideration of the stochastic nature of the waves, current and wind

State of the Art in the Optimisation of Wind Turbine Performance Using CFD

Wind energy has received increasing attention in recent years due to its sustainability and geographically wide availability. The efficiency of wind energy utilisation highly depends on the performance of wind turbines, which convert the kinetic energy in wind into electrical energy. In order to optimise wind turbine performance and reduce the cost of next-generation wind turbines, it is crucial to have a view of the state of the art in the key aspects on the performance optimisation of wind turbines using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which has attracted enormous interest in the development of next-generation wind turbines in recent years. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art progress on optimisation of wind turbine performance using CFD, reviewing the objective functions to judge the performance of wind turbine, CFD approaches applied in the simulation of wind turbines and optimisation algorithms for wind turbine performance. This paper has been written for both researchers new to this research area by summarising underlying theory whilst presenting a comprehensive review on the up-to-date studies, and experts in the field of study by collecting a comprehensive list of related references where the details of computational methods that have been employed lately can be obtained

Progress on the experimental set-up for the testing of a floating offshore wind turbine scaled model in a field site

This document describes design and realization of a small-scale field experiment on a 1:30 model of spar floating support structure for offshore wind turbines. The aim of the experiment is to investigate the dynamic behaviour of the floating wind turbine under extreme wave and parked rotor conditions. The experiment has been going on in the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory of Reggio Calabria (Italy). In this article, all the stages of the experimental activity are presented, and some results are shown in terms of motions and response amplitude operators. Finally, a comparison with corresponding results obtained using ANSYS AQWA software package is shown, and conclusions are drawn. The presented experimental set-up seems promising to test offshore floating structures for marine renewable energy at a relatively large scale in the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory field site

Ocean Energy in Belgium - 2019

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Efficient preliminary floating offshore wind turbine design and testing methodologies and application to a concrete spar design

The current key challenge in the floating offshore wind turbine industry and research is on designing economic floating systems that can compete with fixed-bottom offshore turbines in terms of levelized cost of energy. The preliminary platform design, as well as early experimental design assessments, are critical elements in the overall design process. In this contribution, a brief review of current floating offshore wind turbine platform pre-design and scaled testing methodologies is provided, with a focus on their ability to accommodate the coupled dynamic behaviour of floating offshore wind systems. The exemplary design and testing methodology for a monolithic concrete spar platform as performed within the European KIC AFOSP project is presented. Results from the experimental tests compared to numerical simulations are presented and analysed and show very good agreement for relevant basic dynamic platform properties. Extreme and fatigue loads and cost analysis of the AFOSP system confirm the viability of the presented design process. In summary, the exemplary application of the reduced design and testing methodology for AFOSP confirms that it represents a viable procedure during pre-design of floating offshore wind turbine platforms.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

CFD investigation of a complete floating offshore wind turbine

This chapter presents numerical computations for floating offshore wind turbines for a machine of 10-MW rated power. The rotors were computed using the Helicopter Multi-Block flow solver of the University of Glasgow that solves the Navier-Stokes equations in integral form using the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation for time-dependent domains with moving boundaries. Hydrodynamic loads on the support platform were computed using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method. This method is mesh-free, and represents the fluid by a set of discrete particles. The motion of the floating offshore wind turbine is computed using a Multi-Body Dynamic Model of rigid bodies and frictionless joints. Mooring cables are modelled as a set of springs and dampers. All solvers were validated separately before coupling, and the loosely coupled algorithm used is described in detail alongside the obtained results