The Role of Double-Φ Floating Semi-Submersible Vertical Axis Wind Turbines in Suppressing the Gyroscopic Effect

Jin Jiang, Zhengyang Wang, Weijie Zhang () and Binbin Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Jin Jiang: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, No. 99 Hongjing Avenue, Nanjing 210001, China
Zhengyang Wang: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, No. 99 Hongjing Avenue, Nanjing 210001, China
Weijie Zhang: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, No. 99 Hongjing Avenue, Nanjing 210001, China
Binbin Zhao: Zhejiang Yongsheng Technology Co., No. 1 Chunhui Road, Fuyang District, Hangzhou 311400, China

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-24

Abstract: The gyroscopic effect has significant impacts on the stability, dynamic behavior, and vibration characteristics of high-speed rotating systems. A floating offshore vertical axis wind turbine (FOVWT) exhibits gyroscope-like motions under combined wind–wave–current conditions; the attitude angles of the shaft connected to the platform change continuously in space, making the overall system’s gyroscopic effect more pronounced. From a geometric perspective, this study investigates a method to suppress the gyroscopic effect of floating offshore vertical axis wind turbines: replacing the conventional single-Φ rotor with a stagger-mounted double-layer double-Φ rotor. This configuration exploits the phase difference in circumferential (i.e., 360° around the rotor) aerodynamic loads experienced by the upper and lower rotors; the superposition of these loads ultimately reduces the platform’s pitch response. This study adopts computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for numerical simulations. First, using the NREL 5-MW OC4 floating horizontal axis wind turbine (FOHWT) platform as the research object, we computed the platform’s motion responses under different environmental conditions and verified the effectiveness of the numerical method through comparison with published literature data. Then, under the same marine environment, we compared the motion responses of the conventional single-Φ turbine and double-Φ turbines with different misalignment angles. The results show that modifying the Φ-type rotor configuration can effectively reduce the axial load on the rotor and enhance system stability. As the rotor misalignment angle increases from 15° to 90°, the pitch motion amplitude decreases from 20.6% to 11.8%, while the overall turbine power is only slightly reduced.

Keywords: floating offshore wind turbine (FOVWT); gyroscopic effect; numerical simulation; pitch motion; vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) (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: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/21/5847/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/21/5847/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:21:p:5847-:d:1788689

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Cassie Shen

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().