comparison of hydrodynamic loading models for vertical cylinders in nonlinear waves

Abstract This paper introduces a comparison study between various hydrodynamic loading models in highly nonlinear waves and discusses its first phase - comparing Morison equation and Rainey corrections on a fixed cylinder in regular steep waves. In this study both of these two models showed similar results when compared against experimental data. Morison equation is found to capture the amplitude of the loading sufficiently well. However, neither model was able to capture higher-order loading components which are apparent in very steep waves and are associated with ringing. The main conclusion of this work is the identification of the need of a more appropriate loading model

Comparison of nonlinear wave-loading models on rigid cylinders in regular waves

© 2019 by the authors. Monopiles able to support very large offshore wind turbines are slender structures susceptible to nonlinear resonant phenomena. With the aim to better understand and model the wave-loading on these structures in very steep waves where ringing occurs and the numerical wave-loading models tend to lose validity, this study investigates the distinct influences of nonlinearities in the wave kinematics and in the hydrodynamic loading models. Six wave kinematics from linear to fully nonlinear are modelled in combination with four hydrodynamic loading models from three theories, assessing the effects of both types of nonlinearities and the wave conditions where each type has stronger influence. The main findings include that the nonlinearities in the wave kinematics have stronger influence in the intermediate water depth, while the choice of the hydrodynamic loading model has larger influence in deep water. Moreover, finite-depth FNV theory captures the loading in the widest range of wave and cylinder conditions. The areas of worst prediction by the numerical models were found to be the largest steepness and wave numbers for second harmonic, as well as the vicinity of the wave-breaking limit, especially for the third harmonic. The main cause is the non-monotonic growth of the experimental loading with increasing steepness due to flow separation, which leads to increasing numerical overpredictions since the numerical wave-loading models increase monotonically

The effect of parked wind turbines on wind flow and turbulence over a complex terrain

AbstractWind‐tunnel experiments were performed to study the wind characteristics on a parked wind turbine downwind of three types of hill and over a flat terrain. The focus of the study is on comparing wind characteristics on (a) a wind turbine standing alone and (b) this same type of wind turbine embedded in a wind farm. Particular emphasis is placed on the hill size and shape and the distance between the hill and the wind farm. The hill and wind‐farm models were subjected to an atmospheric boundary layer simulation to create realistic atmospheric conditions. Flow and turbulence were analyzed based on the measured mean flow velocity, Reynolds shear stress, turbulence intensity, and the power spectral density of velocity fluctuations. The experimental results reveal similar trends concerning (a) the wind characteristics obtained on a parked wind turbine embedded in a wind farm downwind of hills of various sizes and shapes and (b) the wind characteristics on this same type of parked wind turbine standing alone in the same position downwind of the same hills. In particular, the discrepancies in the mean flow velocity and turbulence intensity between these test cases are mostly below 5%, thus indicating that a complex terrain clearly has a dominant effect on the wind characteristics, while the effects of parked wind turbines on the wind characteristics are negligible. This important finding indicates that the structural loading of parked wind turbines situated on a complex terrain may be well calculated using the same procedures both for wind turbines standing alone and wind turbines embedded in wind farms if they are both placed at the same distance downwind of the same hills

Lectures on Solid Mechanics

This volume presents the theoretical basics of solid mechanics collecting the lectures held by the Authors for the course of Mechanics of Solids to environmental engineering students at the University of Florence. Lectures on Solid Mechanics is organized in two parts. The first one introduces the theory of three-dimensional elasticity where, after a preparatory synthesis of the basic concepts of mathematics and geometry, the fundamental framework of strain and stress in elastic bodies are introduced. Then the classical law of linear elasticity is presented and finally the part concludes with the "Principle of Virtual Work and variational methods". Moreover, at the end of selected chapters the essential notions of the theory of shells are discussed. The second part concerns the traditional theory of beams focusing on the four fundamental cases: beam under axial forces, terminal couples, torsion, bending and shear. The Readers addressed by this volume are mainly the undergraduate students of Engineering Schools

A reduced order model for the simulation of mooring cable dynamics

In this paper the feasibility of a reduced order model (ROM) for the hydroelastic analysis of mooring lines is analysed. The local response of a piece of cable is studied through high fidelity fluid structure interaction (FSI) simulations. The high fidelity model is built by coupling a computational structural dynamics (CSD) solver with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver using the approach of software components. The ROM is designed in such a way that it can be added to any beam element from a standard CSD solver. From the outside only the beam degrees of freedoms (DOFs) can be seen, the ROM DOFs are all internal.The local response of the cable is analysed and the feasibility of the ROM is discusse

Design Solutions For Modular Satellite Architectures

The cost-effective access to space envisaged by ESA would open a wide range of new opportunities and markets, but is still many years ahead. There is still a lack of devices, circuits, systems which make possible to develop satellites, ground stations and related services at costs compatible with the budget of academic institutions and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). As soon as the development time and cost of small satellites will fall below a certain threshold (e.g. 100,000 to 500,000 €), appropriate business models will likely develop to ensure a cost-effective and pervasive access to space, and related infrastructures and services. These considerations spurred the activity described in this paper, which is aimed at: - proving the feasibility of low-cost satellites using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) devices. This is a new trend in the space industry, which is not yet fully exploited due to the belief that COTS devices are not reliable enough for this kind of applications; - developing a flight model of a flexible and reliable nano-satellite with less than 25,000€; - training students in the field of avionics space systems: the design here described is developed by a team including undergraduate students working towards their graduation work. The educational aspects include the development of specific new university courses; - developing expertise in the field of low-cost avionic systems, both internally (university staff) and externally (graduated students will bring their expertise in their future work activity); - gather and cluster expertise and resources available inside the university around a common high-tech project; - creating a working group composed of both University and SMEs devoted to the application of commercially available technology to space environment. The first step in this direction was the development of a small low cost nano-satellite, started in the year 2004: the name of this project was PiCPoT (Piccolo Cubo del Politecnico di Torino, Small Cube of Politecnico di Torino). The project was carried out by some departments of the Politecnico, in particular Electronics and Aerospace. The main goal of the project was to evaluate the feasibility of using COTS components in a space project in order to greatly reduce costs; the design exploited internal subsystems modularity to allow reuse and further cost reduction for future missions. Starting from the PiCPoT experience, in 2006 we began a new project called ARaMiS (Speretta et al., 2007) which is the Italian acronym for Modular Architecture for Satellites. This work describes how the architecture of the ARaMiS satellite has been obtained from the lesson learned from our former experience. Moreover we describe satellite operations, giving some details of the major subsystems. This work is composed of two parts. The first one describes the design methodology, solutions and techniques that we used to develop the PiCPoT satellite; it gives an overview of its operations, with some details of the major subsystems. Details on the specifications can also be found in (Del Corso et al., 2007; Passerone et al, 2008). The second part, indeed exploits the experience achieved during the PiCPoT development and describes a proposal for a low-cost modular architecture for satellite