Human exposure to motion during maintenance on floating offshore wind turbines

Matti Scheu*, Denis Matha, Marie-Antoinette Schwarzkopf, Athanasios Kolios

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)
46 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Working on floating offshore wind turbines is a complex operation. An important factor is the influence that the structural motion has on humans located on the asset in a harsh environment during maintenance activities and its implications towards personal safety, human comfort and the ability to work. For the research presented in this paper, extensive simulation studies were conducted to assess if and to what extend working on floating offshore wind turbines may be compromised due to extensive structural motion. Results show that weather windows for maintenance activities are reduced by up to 5% when adhering to guidelines suggesting limiting threshold values for acceleration exposure. The corresponding potential financial losses materializing due to longer turbine unavailability after a fault are significant. All the presented and discussed results underline the importance of considering motion criteria in the design phase of a new project - a factor which is not included in design procedures today.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)293-306
Number of pages14
JournalOcean Engineering
Volume165
Early online date25 Jul 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2018

Keywords

  • floating offshore wind energy
  • human exposure to motion
  • maintainability
  • O&M
  • whole-body vibration
  • workability
  • wind turbines

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