• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.367-375
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• 2020

This paper presents an integrated analysis about dynamic performance of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) OC4 DeepCwind with semi-submersible platform under real sea environment. The emphasis of this paper is to investigate how the wave mean drift force and slow-drift wave excitation load (Quadratic transfer function, namely QTF) influence the platform motions, mooring line tension and tower base bending moments. Second order potential theory is being used for computing linear and nonlinear wave effects, including first order wave force, mean drift force and slow-drift excitation loads. Morison model is utilized to account the viscous effect from fluid. This approach considers floating wind turbine as an integrated coupled system. Two time-domain solvers, SIMA (SIMO/RIFLEX/AERODYN) and FAST are being chosen to analyze the global response of the integrated coupled system under small, moderate and severe sea condition. Results show that second order mean drift force and slow-drift force will drift the floater away along wave propagation direction. At the same time, slow-drift force has larger effect than mean drift force. Also tension of the mooring line at fairlead and tower base loads are increased accordingly in all sea conditions under investigation.

• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.5-12
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• 2023

In this study, a structural and fatigue strength evaluation of the Fairlead Chain Stopper (FCS) was performed as a part of the development of a disconnectable mooring system to be applied to 10MW floating offshore wind power generation systems. To estimate the load acting on the FCS, a 10 MW semi-submersible floater was designed using the 10 MW wind turbine developed by Technical University of Denmark(DTU). The minimum breaking load (MBL) of the grade R5 and 147mm mooring chain was applied for the FCS strength analysis. The fatigue load was obtained from the coupled analysis results conducted by a collaborating research institute. The structural and fatigue safety of FCS were evaluated in accordance with DNV codes. From the evaluation results, it was confirmed that the FCS satisfies the structural and fatigue safety requirements.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.379-387
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• 2017

In this study, a pile-guide mooring system (PGMS) was designed for an offshore liquefied natural gas bunkering terminal (LNG-BT), which is an essential infrastructure for large LNG-fuelled ships. The PGMS consisted of guide piles to restrict five motions of the floater, except for heave, as well as a seabed truss structure to support the guide piles and foundation piles to fix the system to the seabed. Singapore port was considered for a case study because it is a highly probable ports for LNG bunkering projects. The wave height, current speed, and wind speed in Singapore port were investigated to calculate the environmental loads acting on the hull and PGMS. A load and resistance factor approach was used for the structural design, and a finite element analysis was performed for design verification. The steel usage of the PGMS was analyzed and compared with the material usage of a gravity-based structure under similar LNG capacity and water depth criteria. This paper also describes the water depth limit and wave conditions of the PGMS based on estimation of the initial investment and the present value profit difference. It suggests a suitable LNG-BT support system for various design conditions.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2017

It is generally acknowledged that the Steel Catenary Riser (SCR) is the most cost-effective riser type for deep-water offshore fields among various risers, including the SCR, flexible riser, and hybrid riser. However, in West Africa, the SCR type may not be suitable for FPSO systems because the large vertical motion of the floater brings about a considerable riser dynamic response. In this paper, an SCR system is designed for the FPSO in the West African field, where the use of a hybrid riser has been preferred. The proposed SCR configuration fulfills the design criteria of the API, such as the strength check and fatigue life. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is also carried out to improve the certainty in the SCR design of a deep-water FPSO. The parameters affecting the strength and fatigue performance of the SCR are considered.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.82-96
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• 2019

A semi-submersible structure has been widely used for offshore drilling and production of oil and gas. The small water plane area makes the structure very sensitive to weight increase in terms of payload and stability. Therefore, it is necessary to lighten the substructure from the early design stage. This study aims at an optimization of hull structure based on a sophisticated yield and buckling strength in accordance with classification rules. An in-house strength assessment system is developed to automate the procedure such as a generation of buckling panels, a collection of required panel information, automatic buckling and yield check and so on. The developed system enables an automatic yield and buckling strength check of all panels composing the hull structure at each iteration of the optimization. Design variables are plate thickness and stiffener section profiles. In order to overcome the difficulty of large number of design variables and the computational burden of FE analysis, various methods are proposed. The steepest descent method is selected as the optimization algorithm for an efficient search. For a reduction of the number of design variables and a direct application to practical design, the stiffener section variable is determined by selecting one from a pre-defined standard library. Plate thickness is also discretized at 0.5t interval. The number of FE analysis is reduced by using equations to analytically estimating the stress changes in gradient calculation and line search steps. As an endeavor to robust optimization, the number of design variables to be simultaneously optimized is divided by grouping the scantling variables by the plane. A sequential optimization is performed group by group. As a verification example, a central column of a semi-submersible structure is optimized and compared with a conventional optimization of all design variables at once.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.213-225
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• 2020

Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) installed in the deep sea regions where stable and strong wind flows are abundant would have significantly improved energy production capacity. When designing FOWT, it is essential to understand the stability and motion performance of the floater. Water tank model tests are required to evaluate these aspects of performance. This paper describes a model test and numerical simulation for a 750-kW semi-submersible platform wind turbine model-II. In the previous model test, the 750-kW FOWT model-I suffered slamming phenomena from extreme wave conditions. Because of that, the platform freeboard of model-II was increased to mitigate the slamming load on the platform deck structure in extreme conditions. Also, the model-I pitch Response Amplitude Operators (RAO) of simulation had strong responses to the natural frequency region. Thus, the hub height of model-II was decreased to reduce the pitch resonance responses from the low-frequency response of the system. Like the model-I, 750-kW FOWT model-II was built with a 1/40 scale ratio. Furthermore, the experiments to evaluate the performance characteristics of the model-II wind turbine were executed at the same location and in the same environment conditions as were those of model-I. These tests included a free decay test, and tests of regular and irregular wave conditions. Both the experimental and simulation conditions considered the blade rotating effect due to the wind. The results of the model tests were compared with the numerical simulations of the FOWT using FAST (Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence) code from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.35-41
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• 2020

In this study, a floating LiDAR system (FLS) is investigated through a field test involving two steps. First, correlations among wind speeds, measured using the met mast and two LiDARs, are computed to analyze the acceptance criteria of LiDAR for measuring wind speed. The results of the analysis show that the slopes of single variant regression between mean wind speeds are below 1.03 and the coefficient of determination is above 0.97. Next, correlations among wind speeds measured using the FLS and a fixed LiDAR are determined through a field test carried out in Doomi-doo, Tong-young, Gyeongsangnam-do. The FLS is installed 300 m away from the fixed LiDAR on the ground. The results show that the slope of single variant regression is approximately 1.0275 and the coefficient of determination is above 0.971. According to the IEA/wind 18 recommendation, it is found that the developed FLS measures valid wind speeds to assess wind resources for the development of offshore wind farms.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.139-160
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• 2015

The global performance of the 5MW OC4 semisubmersible floating wind turbine in random waves was numerically simulated by using the turbine-floater-mooring fully coupled and time-domain dynamic analysis program FAST-CHARM3D. There have been many papers regarding floating offshore wind turbines but the effects of second-order wave-body interactions on their global performance have rarely been studied. The second-order wave forces are actually small compared to the first-order wave forces, but its effect cannot be ignored when the natural frequencies of a floating system are outside the wave-frequency range. In the case of semi-submersible platform, second-order difference-frequency wave-diffraction forces and moments become important since surge/sway and pitch/roll natural frequencies are lower than those of typical incident waves. The computational effort related to the full second-order diffraction calculation is typically very heavy, so in many cases, the simplified approach called Newman's approximation or first-order-wave-force-only are used. However, it needs to be justified against more complete solutions with full QTF (quadratic transfer function), which is a main subject of the present study. The numerically simulated results for the 5MW OC4 semisubmersible floating wind turbine by FAST-CHARM3D are also extensively compared with the DeepCWind model test results by Technip/NREL/UMaine. The predicted motions and mooring tensions for two white-noise input-wave spectra agree well against the measure values. In this paper, the numerical static-offset and free-decay tests are also conducted to verify the system stiffness, damping, and natural frequencies against the experimental results. They also agree well to verify that the dynamic system modeling is correct to the details. The performance of the simplified approaches instead of using the full QTF are also tested.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.173-193
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• 2023

Reliable prediction of the motion of FOWT (floating offshore wind turbine) and associated mooring line tension is important in both design and operation/monitoring processes. In the present study, a 5MW OC4 semisubmersible wind turbine is numerically modeled, simulated, and analyzed by the open-source numerical tool, OpenFAST and in-house numerical tool, Charm3D-FAST. Another commercial-level program FASTv8-OrcaFlex is also introduced for comparison for selected cases. The three simulation programs solve the same turbine-floater-mooring coupled dynamics in time domain while there exist minor differences in the details of the program. Both the motions and mooring-line tensions are calculated and compared with the DeepCWind 1/50 scale model-testing results. The system identification between the numerical and physical models is checked through the static-offset test and free-decay test. Then the system motions and mooring tensions are systematically compared among the simulated results and measured values. Reasonably good agreements between the simulation and measurement are demonstrated for (i) white-noise random waves, (ii) typical random waves, and (iii) typical random waves with steady wind. Based on the comparison between numerical results and experimental data, the relative importance and role of the differences in the numerical methodologies of those three programs can be observed and interpreted. These comparative-study results may provide a certain confidence level and some insight of potential variability in motion and tension predictions for future FOWT designs and applications.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2018

Recently, various efforts have been made to develop oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean. It is very important to consider the load caused by ice in designing floating structures in the area. The magnitude of the ice load and its impact on a structure should be considered. In this paper, we analyze ice parameters affecting the DP performance of FPSO with a DP-assisted mooring system. Several ice characteristics are selected, and the resulting ice load is calculated using GEM software. Numerous simulations are conducted while changing the values of the parameters, and DP capability plots are generated to visualize the effects of changing these parameters. It is shown that the ice drift speed and thickness are the major properties to be considered in DP system design. The limitations of the analysis and future work are discussed in the conclusion.