• Wind and Structures
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.333-350
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• 2017

Differing from the fixed-type, the dynamic motion of floating-type offshore wind turbines is very sensitive to wind and wave excitations. Thus, the sensing and monitoring of its motion is important to evaluate the dynamic responses to the external excitation. In this context, a monitoring system for sensing and processing the wind-induced dynamic motion of spar-type floating offshore wind turbine is developed in this study. It is developed by integrating a 1/00 scale model of 2.5MW spar-type floating offshore wind turbine, water basin equipped with the wind generator, sensing and data acquisition systems, real-time CompactRIO controller and monitoring program. The scale model with the upper rotatable blades is installed within the basin by means of three mooring lines, and its translational and rotational motions are detected by 3-axis inclinometer and accelerometers and gyroscope. The detected motion signals are processed using a real-time controller CompactRIO to calculate the acceleration and tilting angle of nacelle and the attitude of floating platform. The developed monitoring system is demonstrated and validated by measuring and evaluating the time histories and trajectories of nacelle and platform motions for three different wind velocities and for eight different fairlead positions.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.461-471
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• 2023

The main objective of this study was to establish design guidelines for three key design variables (spar thickness, spar diameter, and total draft) by examining their impact on the stress distribution and resonant frequency of a 2.5-MW spar-type floating offshore wind turbine substructure under extreme marine conditions, such as during Typhoon Bolaven. The current findings revealed that the substructure experienced maximum stress at wave frequencies of either 0.199 Hz or 0.294 Hz, consistent with previously reported experimental findings. These results indicated that the novel simulation method proposed in this study, which simultaneously combines hydrodynamic diffraction analysis, computational dynamics analysis, and structural analysis, was successfully validated. It also demonstrated that our proposed simulation method precisely quantified the stress distribution of the substructure. The novel findings, which reveal that the maximum stress of the substructure increases with an increase in total draft and a decrease in spar thickness and spar diameter, offer valuable insights for optimizing the design of spar-type floating offshore wind turbine substructures operating in various harsh marine environments.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.559-579
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• 2015

An experimental study of the effect of mooring systems on the dynamics of a SPAR buoy-type floating offshore wind turbine is presented. The effects of the Center of Gravity (COG), mooring line spring constant, and fairlead location on the turbine's motion in response to regular waves are investigated. Experimental results show that for a typical mooring system of a SPAR buoy-type Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT), the effect of mooring systems on the dynamics of the turbine can be considered negligible. However, the pitch decreases notably as the COG increases. The COG and spring constant of the mooring line have a negligible effect on the fairlead displacement. Numerical simulation and sensitivity analysis show that the wind turbine motion and its sensitivity to changes in the mooring system and COG are very large near resonant frequencies. The test results can be used to validate numerical simulation tools for FOWTs.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.407-413
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• 2013

This paper deals with the analysis of dynamic characteristics of mooring system of floating-type offshore wind turbine. A spar-type floating structure which consists of a nacelle, a tower and the platform excepting blades, is used to model the floating wind turbine and connect three catenary cables to substructure. The motion of floating structure is simulated when the mooring system is attached using irregular wave Pierson-Moskowitz model. The mooring system is analyzed by changing cable position of floating structure. The dynamic behavior characteristics of mooring system are investigated comparing with cable tension and 6-dof motion of floating structure. These characteristics are much useful to initial design of floating-type structure. From the simulation results, the optimized design parameter that is cable position of connect point of mooring cable can be obtained.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.1063-1064
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• 2013

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.331-343
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• 2013

The natural sloshing frequencies of annular cylindrical TLD are parametrically investigated by experiment, aiming at the exploration of its successful use for suppressing the structural vibration of spar-type floating wind turbine subject to multidirectional wind, wave and current excitations. Five prototypes of annular cylindrical TLD are defined according to the inner and outer radii of acryl container, and eight different liquid fill heights are experimented for each TLD prototype. The apparent masses near the first and second natural sloshing frequencies are parametrically investigated by measuring the apparent mass of interior liquid sloshing to the acceleration excitation. It is observed from the parametric experiments that the first natural sloshing frequency shows the remarkable change with respect to the liquid fill height for each TLD model with different container dimensions. On the other hand, the second natural sloshing frequency is not sensitive to the liquid fill height but to the gap size, for all the TLD models, convincing that the annular cylindrical sloshing damper can effectively suppress the wave- and wind-induced tilting motion of the spar-type floating wind turbine.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.683-705
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• 2016

A semi-active algorithm for edgewise vibration control of the spar-type floating offshore wind turbine (SFOWT) blades, nacelle and spar platform is developed in this paper. A tuned mass damper (TMD) is placed in each blade, in the nacelle and on the spar to control the vibrations for these components. A Short Time Fourier Transform algorithm is used for semi-active control of the TMDs. The mathematical formulation of the integrated SFOWT-TMDs system is derived by using Euler-Lagrangian equations. The theoretical model derived is a time-varying system considering the aerodynamic properties of the blade, variable mass and stiffness per unit length, gravity, the interactions among the blades, nacelle, spar, mooring system and the TMDs, the hydrodynamic effects, the restoring moment and the buoyancy force. The aerodynamic loads on the nacelle and the spar due to their coupling with the blades are also considered. The effectiveness of the semi-active TMDs is investigated in the numerical examples where the mooring cable tension, rotor speed and the blade stiffness are varying over time. Except for excessively large strokes of the nacelle TMD, the semi-active algorithm is considerably more effective than the passive one in all cases and its effectiveness is restricted by the low-frequency nature of the nacelle and the spar responses.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2019

Nowadays, the study on Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) is being performed globally. Dozens of numerical simulation tools have been developed for designing FOWTs and simulating their performances in combined wave and wind environments. On the other hand, model tests are still required to verify the results obtained from numerical simulation tools. To predict seakeeping performance of the OC3-Hywind platform, a OC3 spar model moored by a 3-leg catenary spread mooring system with a delta connection was built with a 1/128 scale ratio. The model tests were carried out for various sea states, including rotating rotor effect with wind in the Ocean Engineering Wide Tank, University Of Ulsan (UOU). The model test results are compared with the numerical simulations by UOU in-house code and FAST.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.909-922
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• 2015

The dynamic response and the mooring line tension of a 1/75 scale model of spar-type platform for 2.5 MW floating offshore wind turbine subject to one-dimensional regular harmonic wave are investigated numerically and verified by experiment. The upper part of wind turbine which is composed of three rotor blades, hub and nacelle is modeled as a lumped mass the scale model and three mooring lines are pre-tensioned by means of linear springs. The coupled fluid-rigid body interaction is numerically simulated by a coupled FEM-cable dynamics code, while the experiment is performed in a wave tank with the specially-designed vision and data acquisition system. The time responses of surge, heave and pitch motions of the scale platform and the mooring line tensions are obtained numerically and the frequency domain-converted RAOs are compared with the experiment.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.253-265
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• 2014

The platform and floating structure of spar type offshore wind turbine systems should be designed in order for the 6-DOF motions to be minimized, considering diverse loading environments such as the ocean wave, wind, and current conditions. The objective of this study is to optimally design the platform and substructure of a 3MW spar type wind turbine system with the maximum postural stability in 6-DOF motions as well as the minimum material cost. Therefore, design variables of the platform and substructure were first determined and then optimized by a hydrodynamic analysis. For the hydrodynamic analysis, the body weight of the system was considered, and the ocean wave conditions were quantified to the wave forces using the Morison's equation. Moreover, the minimal number of computation analysis models was generated by the Design of Experiments (DOE), and the design variables of the platform and substructure were finally optimized by using a genetic algorithm with a neural network approximation.