Structural Modeling and Failure Assessment of Spar-Type Substructure for 5 MW Floating Offshore Wind Turbine under Extreme Conditions in the East Sea

Kwangtae Ha, Jun-Bae Kim, Youngjae Yu and Hyoung-Seock Seo
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Kwangtae Ha: Department of Floating Offshore Wind Energy System, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea
Jun-Bae Kim: Fuel Gas Technology Center, Korea Marine Equipment Research Institute, Busan 49111, Korea
Youngjae Yu: Department of Floating Offshore Wind Energy System, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea
Hyoung-Seock Seo: School of Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-23

Abstract: Not only the driving for offshore wind energy capacity of 12 GW by Korea’s Renewable Energy 2030 plan but also the need for the rejuvenation of existing world-class shipbuilders’ infrastructures is drawing much attention to offshore wind energy in Korea, especially to the diverse substructures. Considering the deep-sea environment in the East Sea, this paper presents detailed modeling and analysis of spar-type substructure for a 5 MW floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT). This process uses a fully coupled integrated load analysis, which was carried out using FAST, a widely used integrated load analysis software developed by NREL, coupled with an in-house hydrodynamic code (UOU code). The environmental design loads were calculated from data recorded over three years at the Ulsan Marine buoy point according to the ABS and DNVGL standards. The total 12 maximum cases from DLC 6.1 were selected to evaluate the structural integrity of the spar-type substructure under the three co-directional conditions (45°, 135°, and 315°) of wind and wave. A three-dimensional (3D) structural finite element (FE) model incorporating the wind turbine tower and floating structure bolted joint connection was constructed in FEGate (pre/post-structural analysis module based on MSC NASTRAN for ship and offshore structures). The FEM analysis applied the external loads such as the structural loads due to the inertial acceleration, buoyancy, and gravity, and the environmental loads due to the wind, wave, and current. The three-dimensional FE analysis results from the MSC Nastran software showed that the designed spar-type substructure had enough strength to endure the extreme limitation in the East Sea based on the von Mises criteria. The current process of this study would be applicable to the other substructures such as the submersible type.

Keywords: floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT); substructures; spar-type; integrated load analysis; finite element model (FEM) (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: 2021
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