Coupled Dynamic Analysis of Multiple Unit Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

In the present study, a numerical simulation tool has been developed for the rotor-floater-tether coupled dynamic analysis of Multiple Unit Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (MUFOWT) in the time domain including aero-blade-tower dynamics and control, mooring dynamics and platform motion. In particular, the numerical tool developed in this study is based on the single turbine analysis tool FAST, which was developed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). For linear or nonlinear hydrodynamics of floating platform and generalized-coordinate-based FEM mooring line dynamics, CHARM3D program, hull-riser-mooring coupled dynamics program developed by Prof. M.H. Kim?s research group during the past two decades, is incorporated. So, the entire dynamic behavior of floating offshore wind turbine can be obtained by coupled FAST-CHARM3D in the time domain. During the coupling procedure, FAST calculates all the dynamics and control of tower and wind turbine including the platform itself, and CHARM3D feeds all the relevant forces on the platform into FAST. Then FAST computes the whole dynamics of wind turbine using the forces from CHARM3D and return the updated displacements and velocities of the platform to CHARM3D.

To analyze the dynamics of MUFOWT, the coupled FAST-CHARM3D is expanded more and re-designed. The global matrix that includes one floating platform and a number of turbines is built at each time step of the simulation, and solved to obtain the entire degrees of freedom of the system. The developed MUFOWT analysis tool is able to compute any type of floating platform with various kinds of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT). Individual control of each turbine is also available and the different structural properties of tower and blades can be applied. The coupled dynamic analysis for the three-turbine MUFOWT and five-turbine MUFOWT are carried out and the performances of each turbine and floating platform in normal operational condition are assessed. To investigate the coupling effect between platform and each turbine, one turbine failure event is simulated and checked. The analysis shows that some of the mal-function of one turbine in MUFOWT may induce significant changes in the performance of other turbines or floating platform. The present approach can directly be applied to the development of the remote structural health monitoring system of MUFOWT in detecting partial turbine failure by measuring tower or platform responses in the future.