• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.285-296
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• 2011

Spar platforms have several advantages for deploying wind turbines in offshore for depth beyond 120 m. The merit of spar platform is large range of topside payloads, favourable motions compared to other floating structures and minimum hull/deck interface. The main objective of this paper is to present the response analysis of the slack moored spar platform supporting 5MW wind turbine with bottom keel plates in regular and random waves, studied experimentally and numerically. A 1:100 scale model of the spar with sparD, sparCD and sparSD configuration was studied in the wave basin ($30{\times}30{\times}3m$) in Ocean engineering department in IIT Madras. In present study the effect of wind loading, blade dynamics and control, and tower elasticity are not considered. This paper presents the details of the studies carried out on a 16 m diameter and 100 m long spar buoy supporting a 90 m tall 5 MW wind turbine with 3600 kN weight of Nacelle and Rotor and 3500 kN weight of tower. The weight of the ballast and the draft of the spar are adjusted in such a way to keep the centre of gravity below the centre of buoyancy. The mooring lines are divided into four groups, each of which has four lines. The studies were carried out in regular and random waves. The operational significant wave height of 2.5 m and 10 s wave period and survival significant wave height of 6 m and 18 s wave period in 300 m water depth are considered. The wind speed corresponding to the operational wave height is about 22 knots and this wind speed is considered to be operating wind speed for turbines. The heave and surge accelerations at the top of spar platform were measured and are used for calculating the response. The geometric modeling of spar was carried out using Multisurf and this was directly exported to WAMIT for subsequent hydrodynamic and mooring system analysis. The numerical results were compared with experimental results and the comparison was found to be good. Parametric study was carried out to find out the effect of shape, size and spacing of keel plate and from the results obtained from present work ,it is recommended to use circular keel plate instead of square plate.