Thesis

Hydrodynamic design aspects of tension leg platforms for wind turbines

Creator
Rights statement
Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2016
Thesis identifier
  • T14428
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201386993
Person Identifier (ORCID)
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • This thesis describes an experimental and numerical investigation of the dynamic performance of a TLP wind turbine concept in realistic environmental conditions. An extensive test campaign may be costly and time-consuming; nevertheless experiments are widely used for investigating the performance of marine systems and providing a great care is taken can yield reliable results. On the other hand, computational simulations offer a fast, low cost alternative to experiments. Continued technological advances offer ever-increasing computational power, which can be harnessed for fully coupled time-domain aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulations to integrate all complex environmental conditions in the same computational environment. Fully coupled analysis methods are rapidly gaining popularity for renewable energy applications. The application of such techniques to determine the performance of FOWTs allow designers to assess hydrodynamic performance at the early design stage enabling any necessary corrective action to be taken before the FOWT is deployed.The thesis shows that the use of experimental data is an invaluable tool in order to characterise the hydrodynamic performance of FOWTs and can also be used to improve and validate numerical predictions. This research demonstrates that even the most advanced numerical tools can sometimes produce questionable results. In this study it was demonstrated that in some cases the numerical predictions were very close to the results obtained from the experiments but in others the numerical model failed to accurately predict the platform behaviour. Some aspects of the experimental study were also problematic, in particular the amount of time required to set up such a complex experiment and also the problems associated with obtaining the correct mass properties whilst insuring adequate model stiffness in the roll and pitch modes of motion. The Software in the Loop system used to simulate the wind loading has not been validated.The results from both studies show the benefits of such TLP structures in terms of reduced motions which are vital to obtain a high power output from a wind turbine.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Khorasanchi, Mahdi
  • Incecik, A.
Resource Type
DOI
Funder
Embargo Note
  • The electronic version of this thesis is currently under moratorium due to copyright restrictions. If you are the author of this thesis, please contact the Library to resolve this issue.

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