In this study, high-quality computer simulations are required when designing floating wind turbines because of the complex dynamic responses that are inherent with a high number of degrees of freedom and variable metocean conditions.
and is funded by the US Department of Energy. The project is planned to be deployed and connected to the grid by 2019 in the Northeast U.S. Two 6MW wind turbines supported on VolturnUS concrete hulls will be used for the New England Aqua Ventus I project.
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Here, the testing included structural testing sub-components of the hull and served as experimental verification of American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) concrete design methodology which is currently approved and being used to design the first commercial scale FOWTs in the United States. In this work, experimental testing was conducted to verify the performance of the concrete under operational, serviceability, and extreme loading conditions as required by the American Bureau of Shipping Guide for Building and Classing Floating Offshore Wind Turbines. This has led the University of Maine to develop a concrete hull technology called VolturnUS for full-scale 6MW FOWTs. Floating wind turbines deployed in the harsh offshore marine environment require the use of materials that are cost-effective, corrosion resistant, require little maintenance and are highly durable. The United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the offshore wind community commonly refer to 60m as the transition point between fixed more » bottom structures and floating structures due to economic reasons. Off the US coast, 60% of the offshore wind lies in deep water (greater than 60m) where the development of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) hull technology will likely be required in lieu of fixed bottom technology such as jacket structures. The abundance of consistent high strength winds off the world’s coastlines and the close proximity to dense population centers has led to development of innovative marine structures to support wind turbines to capture this energy resource. A large number of tests were performed ranging from simple free-decay tests to complex operating conditions with irregular sea states and dynamic winds. Recorded data from the floating wind turbine models included rotor torque and position, tower top and base forces and moments, mooring line tensions, six-axis platform motions and accelerations at key locations on the nacelle, tower, and platform. The high-quality wind environments, unique to these tests, were realized in the offshore basin via a novel wind machine which exhibits negligible swirl and low turbulence intensity in the flow field. The models were tested under Froude scale wind and wave loads.
The three generic platform designs were intended to cover the spectrum of currently investigated concepts, each based on proven floating offshore structure technology.
The models considered consisted of the horizontal axis, NREL 5 MW Reference Wind Turbine (Jonkman et al., 2009) with a flexible tower affixed atop three distinct platforms: a tension leg platform (TLP), a spar-buoy modeled after the OC3 Hywind (Jonkman, 2010) and a semi-submersible. The test program subsequently described in this report was performed at MARIN (Maritime Research Institute Netherlands) in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Once the validation process is complete, coupled simulators such as FAST can be used with a much greater degree of confidence in design processes more » for commercial development of floating offshore wind turbines. Of particular interest is validating the floating offshore wind turbine simulation capabilities of NREL’s FAST open-source simulation tool. The intended use for this data is for performing comparisons with predictions from various aero-hydro-servo-elastic floating wind turbine simulators for calibration and validation. The primary goal of the basin model test program discussed herein is to properly scale and accurately capture physical data of the rigid body motions, accelerations and loads for different floating wind turbine platform technologies.