Experimental Study on the Performance of a Crashworthy Device for the Monopile Offshore Wind Turbine against Ship Impact

Nianxin Ren, Wei Li, Zhe Ma, Jinping Ou and Dezhi Ning
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Nianxin Ren: Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Wei Li: Offshore Wind Power R&D Center, Powerchina Huadong Engineering Corporation, Hangzhou 310014, China
Zhe Ma: Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Jinping Ou: State Key Laboratory of Coast and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Dezhi Ning: State Key Laboratory of Coast and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-12

Abstract: In the present work, a crashworthy device for a monopile offshore wind turbine has been proposed, which consists of the inner two-layer rubber torus and the outer thin steel shell. The performance of the crashworthy device against ship impact has been investigated experimentally. Based on the prototype of a 4 MW monopile wind turbine in the East China Sea, the scale ratio of the test model has been designed to be 1/50. The test ship model has been simplified as a “rigid car” equipped with a high-frequency force sensor in the front, which is available for changing the ship mass with different weights. The ship-impact velocity can be accurately controlled by a motion platform driven by a direct current machine. The effect of the key design parameters of the crashworthy device on its anti-impact performance has been tested and compared under typical ship impact cases. The results indicate that the crashworthy device can effectively reduce both the ship impact force and the top nacelle acceleration, and the physical mechanism that has been clarified. The outer thin steel shell can significantly use its structural deformation to absorb the ship impact energy, which is beneficial for reducing the structural damage of the offshore wind turbine (OWT)’s tower. The inner rubber torus can effectively prolong the ship impact duration, which is available for smoothing the impact force. Finally, the porous design for the outer steel shell of the crashworthy device has been proposed and tested.

Keywords: crashworthy device; monopile foundation; offshore wind turbine; ship impact; model tests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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