Dynamic Responses of Jacket-Type Offshore Wind Turbines Using Decoupled and Coupled Models

Abstract

This paper presents numerical studies of the dynamic responses of two jacket-type offshore wind turbines (OWTs) using both decoupled and coupled models. The investigated structures are the OC4 (Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation) jacket foundation and a full-lattice support structure presented by Long et al., 2012, “Lattice Towers for Bottom-Fixed Offshore Wind Turbines in the Ultimate Limit State: Variation of Some Geo metric Parameters,” ASME J. Offshore Mech. Arct. Eng., 134(2), p. 021202. Both structures support the NREL 5-MW wind turbine. Different operational wind and wave loadings at an offshore site with relatively high soil stiffness are investigated. In the decoupled (hydroelastic) model, the thrust and torque from an isolated rotor model were used as wind loads on the decoupled model together with a linear aerodynamic damper. The coupled model is a hydro-servo-aero-elastic representation of the system. The objective of this study is to evaluate the applicability of the computationally efficient linear decoupled model by comparing with the results obtained from the nonlinear coupled model. Good agreement was obtained in the eigen-frequency analysis, decay tests, and wave-only simulations. It was also found that, by applying the thrust force from an isolated rotor model in combination with linear damping, reasonable agreement could be obtained between the decoupled and coupled models in combined wind and wave simulations.