Abstract
Aerodynamic performance of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) is significantly influenced by platform surging motions. Accurate prediction of the unsteady aerodynamic loads is imperative for determining the fatigue life, ultimate loads on key components such as FOWT rotor blades, gearbox and power converter. The current study examines the predictions of numerical codes by comparing with unsteady experimental results of a scaled floating wind turbine rotor. The influence of platform surge amplitude together with the tip speed ratio on the unsteady aerodynamic loading has been simulated through unsteady CFD. It is shown that the unsteady aerodynamic loads of FOWT are highly sensitive to the changes in frequency and amplitude of the platform motion. Also, the surging motion significantly influences the windmill operating state due to strong flow interaction between the rotating blades and generated blade-tip vortices. Almost in all frequencies and amplitudes, CFD, LR-BEM and LR-uBEM predictions of mean thrust shows a good correlation with experimental results.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2578 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Energies |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 27 Sept 2018 |
Funding
Acknowledgments: Authors gratefully acknowledges the great support of Lloyds Register and University of Strathclyde University for the numerical simulation and experiments. This research was supported by Lloyds Register.
Keywords
- CFD
- floating offshore wind turbine
- scaled wind turbine rotor
- unsteady BEM