title: Efficient preliminary floating offshore wind turbine design and testing methodologies and application to a concrete spar design.
abstract: The current key challenge in the floating offshore wind turbine industry and research is on designing economic floating systems that can compete with fixed-bottom offshore turbines in terms of levelized cost of energy. The preliminary platform design, as well as early experimental design assessments, are critical elements in the overall design process. In this contribution, a brief review of current floating offshore wind turbine platform pre-design and scaled testing methodologies is provided, with a focus on their ability to accommodate the coupled dynamic behaviour of floating offshore wind systems. The exemplary design and testing methodology for a monolithic concrete spar platform as performed within the European KIC AFOSP project is presented. Results from the experimental tests compared to numerical simulations are presented and analysed and show very good agreement for relevant basic dynamic platform properties. Extreme and fatigue loads and cost analysis of the AFOSP system confirm the viability of the presented design process. In summary, the exemplary application of the reduced design and testing methodology for AFOSP confirms that it represents a viable procedure during pre-design of floating offshore wind turbine platforms.
authors.affiliation: Stuttgart Wind Energy, University of Stuttgart, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany matha@ifb.uni-stuttgart.de.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Matha
authors.affiliation: Stuttgart Wind Energy, University of Stuttgart, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sandner
authors.affiliation: Department of Construction Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Climent
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Molins
authors.affiliation: Department of Construction Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Campos
authors.affiliation: Stuttgart Wind Energy, University of Stuttgart, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Po Wen
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Cheng
keywords: AFOSP project; combined wind wave testing; design; floating offshore wind turbines; monolithic concrete spar buoy