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Offshore winds are generally stronger and more consistent than winds on land, making the offshore environment attractive for wind energy development. A large part of the offshore wind resource is however located in deep water, where floating turbines are the only economical way of harvesting the energy. The design of offshore floating wind turbines relies on the use of modeling tools that can simulate the entire coupled system behaviour. At present, most of these tools include only first-order hydrodynamic theory. However, observations of supposed second-order hydrodynamic responses in wave-tank tests performed by the DeepCwind consortium suggest that second-order effects might be critical. In this paper, the methodology used by the oil and gas industry has been modified to apply to the analysis of floating wind turbines, and is used to assess the effect of second-order hydrodynamics on floating offshore wind turbines. The method relies on combined use of the frequency-domain tool WAMIT and the time- domain tool FAST. The proposed assessment method has been applied to two different floating wind concepts, a spar and a tension-leg-platform (TLP), both supporting the NREL 5-MW baseline wind turbine. Results showing the hydrodynamic forces and motion response for these systems are presented and analysed, and compared to aerodynamic effects., Energy Procedia, 35, ISSN:1876-6102, DeepWind'2013 – Selected papers from 10th Deep Sea Offshore Wind R&D Conference

The present study investigates three different types of mooring systems in order to establish potential cost reductions and applicability to wave energy converters (WECs). Proposed mooring systems for three existing WECs create the basis for this study, and the study highlights areas of interest using a preliminary cost estimation and discussion of buildability issues. Using synthetic rope and variations in the mooring configuration has the potential of influencing the cost significantly. In order to quantify this potential, a simple quasi-static analysis is performed, which shows that a SALM type system can provide a paramount cost reduction compared to a traditional CALM type system with chain lines. Similarly, use of nylon ropes similarly appears to provide low cost.

We introduce a new stabilized high-order and unstructured numerical model for modeling fully nonlinear and dispersive water waves. The model is based on a nodal spectral element method of arbitrary order in space and a -transformed formulation due to Cai, Langtangen, Nielsen and Tveito (1998). In the present paper we use a single layer of quadratic (in 2D) and prismatic (in 3D) elements. The model has been stabilized through a combination of over-integration of the Galerkin projections and a mild modal filter. We present numerical tests of nonlinear waves serving as a proof-of-concept validation for this new high-order model. The model is shown to exhibit exponential convergence even for very steep waves and there is a good agreement to analytic and experimental data.

Nowadays, pile and suction caisson foundations are widely used to support offshore structures which are subjected to vertical dynamic loads. The dynamic soil-structure interaction of floating foundations (foundations embedded in a soil layer whose height is greater than the foundation length) is investigated by numerical analyses of representative finite element models. The 3D numerical model is compared and validated with existing analytical solutions. A parametric study is carried out analyzing the effect of the slenderness ratio Hp/d and the height and the stiffness of the soil layer on the dynamic stiffness and damping.