• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.479-487
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• 2023

Recently, the destructive power of typhoons is continuously increasing owing to global warming. In a situation where the installation of floating wind turbines is increasing worldwide, concerns about the huge loss and collapse of floating offshore wind turbines owing to strong typhoons are deepening. A new type of disconnectable mooring system must be developed for the safe operation of floating offshore wind turbines. A new submersible mooring pulley considered in this study is devised to more easily attach or detach the floating of shore wind turbine with mooring lines compared with other disconnectable mooring apparatuses. To investigate the structural safety of the initial design of submersible mooring pulley that can be applied to an 8MW-class floating type offshore wind turbine, scale-down structural models were developed using a 3-D printer and structural tests were performed on the models. For the structural tests of the scale-down models, tensile specimens of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene material that was used in the 3-D printing were prepared, and the material properties were evaluated by conducting the tensile tests. The finite element analysis (FEA) of submersible mooring pulley was performed by applying the material properties obtained from the tensile tests and the same load and boundary conditions as in the scale-down model structural tests. Through the FEA, the structural weak parts on the submersible mooring pulley were reviewed. The structural model tests were conducted considering the main load conditions of submersible mooring pulley, and the FEA and test results were compared for the locations that exceeded the maximum tensile stress of the material. The results of the FEA and structural model tests indicated that the connection structure of the body and the wheel was weak in operating conditions and that of the body and the chain stopper was weak in mooring conditions. The results of this study enabled to experimentally verify the structural safety of the initial design of submersible mooring pulley. The study results can be usefully used to improve the structural strength of submersible mooring pulley in a detailed design stage.