Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

A developed failure mode and effect analysis for floating offshore

wind turbine support structures
He Li a, b, H. Diaz a, C. Guedes Soares a, *
a
Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering (CENTEC), Instituto SuperiorT
ecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
b
Center for System Reliability and Safety, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan, 611731, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper extends the conventional failure mode and effect analysis methodology by introducing
Received 17 June 2020 weights of its indices that are severity, occurrence, and detection as a basis to analyze the failures of the
Received in revised form support structure of a generic floating offshore wind turbine. Critical failure causes, failure modes, as well
10 August 2020
as systems of the support structure of the floating offshore wind turbine are ascertained. Moreover,
Accepted 6 September 2020
Available online 10 September 2020
based on the analysis, recommendations on corrections and preventive actions are suggested aiming at
ensuring the safe and economic operations of the support structure. The validation of the proposed
technique is finalized by a comparison study between the results of conventional failure mode and effect
Keywords:
FMEA
analysis methodology and that of the proposed method. The comparison indicates that the proposed
Failure analysis technique is more in line with practice and flexible for use and has the merit in removing the limitations
Risk analysis of conventional failure mode and effect analysis methodology that different failure causes generate the
Support structure same risk priority number.
Floating offshore wind turbine © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Offshore wind turbines are established worldwide with various
farms in different countries producing electricity commercially [1].
The initial farms were established very close to shore with bottom-
fixed structures, mostly monopiles e.g. in Ref. [2] but evolving to
jackets for larger water depths e.g. in Ref. [3]. The present tendency
is moving towards floating platforms, some already established in
demonstration projects [4], while others still at the design stage [5].
One of the main problems still to be solved is related with the cost
of these structures [6,7]. The other important aspect is related with
their safety and reliability, which is a topic that has been widely
studied for bottom-fixed offshore wind foundations, e.g. Refs. [8,9],
but is yet to reach the same level of maturity for floating structures.
Failure analysis is usually the first step in reliability and main-
tainability analysis of floating offshore wind turbines, which can
[10e15]: (i) identify critical systems and components that are more
unreliable than others; (ii) ascertain the failure modes with higher
risk, which are in great need of further investigation or monitoring;
(iii) determine root causes for potential failures and suggest actions
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: c.guedes.soares@centec.tecnico.ulisboa.pt (C. Guedes Soares).
to avoid their occurrence; (iv) analyze local and widespread im-
pacts of failures on floating offshore wind turbines; (v) suggest
recommendations to a low-cost maintenance strategy as well as
corrections to system design.
To achieve the goals mentioned above, a considerable amount of
reliability or failure analysis method (e.g., Fault Tree Analysis [11],
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) [13,16e19], and Failure
Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) [20]) have been
developed and adopted for offshore wind turbines and their com-
ponents. Among others, due to features of highly hierarchical
structure, understandable, and easy construction, FMEAs and their
upgraded methodologies (FMECAs) are employed comprehensively
for failure analysis of offshore wind turbines (both floating and
bottom-fixed structures) [10,13].
The FMEAs use Risk Priority Number (RPN) as a product of
severity, occurrence, and detection to rank the relative importance
of failure modes, failure causes, components, and systems of
floating offshore wind turbines [10,21,22]. Specifically, the values of
severity, occurrence, and detection are assigned by engineers in the
field or by designers according to their experience in floating
offshore wind turbines design, which confirms that the FMEAs are
subjective methods and the calculated results (RPNs) of which are
personal as well [23,24]. To be specific, on one hand, RPNs of failure
items of floating offshore wind turbines are the result of personal

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.09.033
0960-1481/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares
judgments of engineers and/or designers, which may vary in terms
of subjective experiences of the employed specialists. On the other
hand, RPNs are dimensionless and not possible to be compared
with others computed from other floating offshore wind turbines
installed in diverse wind farms so that the correctness of the failure
analysis results cannot be theoretically validated [25e27].
For failure analysis of offshore wind turbines (floating and
bottom-fixed facilities), Arabian-Hoseynabadi et al. [16] applied the
FMEA to determine the primary failure modes of a 2 MW indirect
variable speed wind turbine, concluded that the decisive failure
mode of the wind turbine is materials failure. Bharatbhai [17]
applied a FMEA to the failure analysis of a 5 MW wind turbine,
found that turbine blades and the lubrication system are the two
most crucial systems of the wind turbine, which generate the
highest RPNs. Instead of investigating the floating offshore wind
turbine at a global point of view, Sinha and Steel [13] proposed a
four-point FMECA technique for detail analysis of failures of the
gearbox of an offshore wind turbine, which is proved to be easy-to-
use. Kang et al. [18] developed a correlated FMEA methodology to
model the correlations of failure modes and accordingly to ascer-
tain their effects on floating offshore wind turbine failures. Their
results indicate that harsh sea conditions (e.g. strong wave/wind)
and mooring lines are critical failure causes and system respectively
that call for particular attention.
However, to date, floating offshore wind turbines are relatively
new, and there is yet lack of extensive experience for failure anal-
ysis especially for their support structures in comparison of the
bottom-fixed structures [8,9,28]. Hence, Schue et al. [20] collected
337 failure modes and employed more than 40 specialists to
finalize the failure analysis of offshore wind turbines installed
around Europe by using the FMEA technique, in the study, tower
and substructures of floating offshore wind turbines were
considered.
Generally, FMEAs/FMECAs are conventional failure analysis
methodologies for complex structures like floating offshore wind
turbines. One unneglectable limitation of those methodologies,
however, is that the weights of indices, such as severity, occurrence,
and detection, are neglected, see Refs. [13,16e20,29,30]. Xiao et al.
[31] put forward that severity, occurrence, and detection should be
assigned by weights associated with their importance according to
their features of maintenance when conducting FMEAs/FMECAs,
inspired by which numerous works have been published to discuss
methodologies of generating weights for severity, occurrence, and
detection in various applications. For instance, [0.4 0.35 0.25] were
assigned to be the importance of severity, occurrence, and detec-
tion in Ref. [32] and [0.429 0.297 0.264] in Ref. [33]. Such applica-
tions proved the efficiency and rationality of applying FMEAs/
FMECAs by considering the weights of their indices. However, such
an idea has not been applied to the failure analysis of wind turbines,
both onshore and offshore, globally or partly.
Furthermore, discrete values of severity, occurrence, and
detection make RPNs to be distributed mainly at the bottom of the
scale and some certain values [34]. The uneven RPNs result is
incomparable which calls for a careful examination of conventional
computational forms of RPNs [19].
Floating offshore wind turbines are complex systems with a
considerable number of components and a significant amount of
failure modes [35e37]. However, the concepts of floating offshore
wind turbines, especially their support structures, are relatively
new and very few have been investigated according to the publi-
cations available. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to apply FMEA
by considering weights of their indices, especially severity, occur-
rence, and detection, to conduct a comprehensive failure analysis of
floating offshore wind turbine structures. This study allows one to
identify critical systems, components, failure modes, and failure
134
Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145
causes, meanwhile, suggest recommendations on corrections for
system design and preventive actions for safe operation and
maintenance. The main novel contributions of this work are:
(1) To complete in detail a failure analysis of floating offshore
wind turbine support structures considering weights of
indices of FMEA methodology.
(2) To present a generalization approach that converts values of
severity, occurrence, and detection into comparable scale of
their weights to avoid bias of RPN calculation.
(3) To collect field data from engineers, researchers, and de-
signers with various backgrounds as a basis to drive the
analysis and provide original understandings of support
structures to the ones in the offshore wind energy sector.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
proposes the developed FMEA technique. Results and recommen-
dations are provided in Section 3. Comparisons with the traditional
FMEA is implemented in Section 4. Section 5 provides concludes.
2. The proposed FMEA methodology
FMEA is a systemic procedure to access and rank the risk of
failure items of a system [38]. It is a useful tool for the identification
of riskiest failure items concerning their contributions to the sys-
tem [39]. Subjective index (RPN), objective index (Cost Priority
Number, CPN) [25e27], and semi-subjective index (Cost-and-Risk
Priority Number, CRPN) [19] are created to numerically represent
the risk level of each failure item. The index selection is in line with
the objective of failure/risk analysis: (i) RPN represents the risk of
failure. (ii) CPN denotes the risk of economic loss. (iii) CRPN is a
combined index that reflects both, but its assessment requires
additional data collected from the field and tedious computations.
RPNs are conventionally computed by Eq. (1). To be specific,
severity is failure consequence. Occurrence represents failure
likelihood. Detection numerically reflects the difficulties of a failure
to be detected in advance of its occurrence.
RPN ¼ VðSeverityÞ  VðOccurrenceÞ  VðDetectionÞ (1)
where, VðSeverityÞ, VðOccurrenceÞ, and VðDetectionÞ are values of
severity, occurrence, and detection of a failure item, respectively.
However, RPNs are criticized for their drawbacks like assigning
the same weights to severity, occurrence, and detection when being
implemented to failure analysis of complex systems such as wind
turbines and their subsystems [18e20,22,31,34]. To this end, this
paper presents a new way of generating RPNs of failure items of
floating offshore wind turbine support structures to remove the
restrictions aforementioned.
The proposed FMEA methodology generates RPN of failure
causes, failure modes, as well as components by both values of
severity, occurrence, and detection of each item and their relative
weights. Considering that the scales of indices (severity, occur-
rence, and detection) and their weights are [1,10] and [0, 1],
respectively. A generalization approach is designed for converting
values of severity, occurrence, and detection into the same scale as
their weights.
Denote bSi , bOi , and bDi the average values of severity, occur-
rence, and detection of failure cause i given by specialists. The
weight vector of indices is J ¼ ½kS kO kD , specifically, kS , kO , and kD
are weights of severity, occurrence, and detection, respectively.
Hence, the original values of severity, occurrence, and detection
gave by specialists can be represented by:
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

8 9 of the two branches of parameters, however, are unequal e.g. values

< bS1 bS2 / bSi / bSn = of indices are always from one to ten, while, their weights are from
bO1 bO2 / bOi / bOn (2) zero to one. The proposed generalization approach converts the
:
bD1 bD2 / bDi / bDn ; scale of values of indices into zero to one (to be consistent with the
Denote scale of weights) and at the same time keeps the relative impor-
tance of failure items. The objective is to avoid that each type of
bK i parameters impacts more on the results than the other, which may
xK ij ¼ (3) introduce bias to the final RPNs computed.
bK j

where, K represents severity, occurrence, and detection. 3. Results and recommendations

Therefore, the comparison matrix is attained as:
2 3 3.1. The support structure of the floating offshore wind turbine
xK 11 xK12 / xK1n
6 xK xK21 / xK2n 7 A general support structure of a floating offshore wind turbine is
6 21 7 (4)
4« « 1 « 5 considered in this study. Specifically, the support structure is
xKn1 xKn2 / xKnn divided into three systems: mooring system (MS), floating foun-
The normalized matrix is defined as: dation (FF) as well as tower and transition piece system (TT), with
22 components: mooring lines (ML), fairlead (FL), anchor (AC),
2 3
fK 11 fK12 / fK1n transitional chain (TC), friction chain (FC), mooring winch (MW),
6 fK 21 fK21 / fK2n 7 buoys friction chain (BFC), anchor pickup device (APD), hydraulic
6 7 (5)
4« « 1 « 5 motor (HM), accumulator (ACL), connectors (CNT), tower (TW),
fKn1 fKn2 / fKnn transition piece (TP), pipes (PP), pillars (PL), lights (LT), helicopter
assistance equipment (HA), handrails (HD), ladders (LD), vents (VT),
where sensors (SS), and manholes (MH). The configuration of the support
structure is displayed in Fig. 2. The tower provides mechanical
xKij support and resists the force and movement of the upper wind
fK ij ¼ (6)
P
n turbine. At the same time, the transition piece is an adapting piece
xKij that connects the tower and the lower floating foundation struc-
i¼1
tures. The floating foundation structures provide buoyancy to the
The adjusted value of index K of failure cause i is defined as: upper structures, including the wind turbine, the tower, and the
transition piece. The mooring system locates the floating offshore
P
n
fK ij wind turbine within a selected sea space mainly by mooring lines
j¼1 and anchors [40].
gK i ¼ (7)
n Overall, 12 failure modes with 56 failure causes of the general
support structure of floating offshore wind turbines were collected
According to Eqs. (6) and (7), gK i 2½0 1 which is the same as the
from published literature available online (see appendix B). A hi-
scale of the weight vector of indices J ¼ ½kS kO kD 2½0 1.
erarchical coding system, that is, system-failure mode-failure
Hence, the weighted RPN of failure cause i is defined as:
cause, was applied to code failure modes and failure causes. For
2 3
gSi instance, a failure cause namely transitional chain wear results in
RPNiFC ¼ J  Gi ¼ ½ kS kO kD 4 gOi 5 (8) mooring lines broken is denoted by MS-FM2-#6, in which, MS re-
gDi flects the mooring system, FM2 and #6 indicate the second failure
mode and the sixth failure causes of the support structure,
where, Gi denotes the vector of the generalized values of severity, respectively.
occurrence, and detection of failure cause i. Three indices, severity, occurrence, and detection, were
Based on the RPNs of failure causes, see Eq. (8), RPNs of failure considered into the proposed FMEA technique. The scales of indices
are from 1 to 10, the same as what has been commonly used in
modes k (RPNkFM ) and system h (RPNhSyst ) can be computed as:
FMEAs of floating offshore wind turbines [13], see Table 1. The
values of severity, occurrence, and detection were assigned by five
X
m X
m X
l
RPNhSyst ¼ RPNkFM ¼ RPNjFC (9) specialists from China and Spain. The details about the employed
h¼1 h¼1 j¼1 specialists are listed in Table 2. Moreover, the weights of severity,
occurrence, and detection were given based on the values used by
The comparison between conventional FMEA and the proposed Ref. [32]:
technique is demonstrated in Fig. 1.
In general, the proposed generalization approach converts the J ¼ ½kS kO kD  ¼ ½0:4 0:35 0:25 (10)
integer values of severity, occurrence, and detection into the same
scale of their weights. However, the importance of each failure For the data implemented in this study, several aspects should be
cause was not changed, that is, a larger value of an index in the clarified.
numerical space will be still larger after being converted and
accordingly it will not impact on RPN rank computed. The mathe- (1) In terms of the employed specialists. The experiences of
matical proof is conducted in Appendix A. From the mathematical specialists directly impact on FMEA results. Such experiences
meaning perspective, the generalization approach has the merit of associated with both aspects: the number of employed spe-
ensuring the same importance of values of indices and their cialists and their working period in the field. However, how
weights. Specifically, two branches of parameters involved in the many specialists should be employed and their required
computation of RPNs when applying the proposed FMEA meth- background are still not consensual to the floating offshore
odology, that are, absolute values of indices and weights. The scales wind energy sector. Employing a smaller number of
135
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

Fig. 1. The comparison between the proposed FMEA and the conventional one.

Fig. 2. The configuration of the support structure of the floating offshore wind turbine.

Table 1
Rating scales of severity, occurrence, and detection of FMEA of the floating offshore wind turbine support structures [13]

Rating Severity (S) Occurrence (O) Detection (D)

Probability Description

1 Effect is not noticed P < 105 Extremely less Certain

2 Very slight effect noticed P ¼ 105 Remote Very high
3 Slight effect causing annoyance P ¼ 105 Very slight High
4 Slight effect causing return of product 105 < P < 4  104 Slight Moderate
5 Moderate effect causing return of product 4  104 < P < 2  103 Occasional Medium
6 Significant effect 2  103 < P < 1  102 Moderate Low chance
7 Major effect 102 < P < 4  102 Frequent Slight
8 Extreme effect, system inoperable, safety issue 4  103 < P < 0.2 High Remote
9 Critical effect, system shutdown, safety risk 0.2 < P < 0.33 Very high Very remote
10 Hazardous, without warning, life-threatening P > 0.33 Extremely high No chance, no inspection

specialists or specialists with less experience may introduce
biases to the results of failure analysis of the floating offshore
wind turbine support structures. To avoid the aforemen-
tioned biases and to provide convincing results, this research
employs five specialists with diverse backgrounds and with
an overall working period of 28 years. The specialists come
from different countries, working in different fields of the
offshore wind sector, and employed in different organiza-
tions (wind companies, wind farms, research institutions).
(2) As for the weights of indices. Weights of indices are param-
eters that influence the analytic results as well. To date, the
weights of indices of FMEAs are personal. The reason is that

136
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares
Table 2
Specialists involved in failure analysis of the floating offshore wind turbine support structures.
Code Employer
<1> Wind Energy Company
<2> Wind Energy Company
<3> Wind Energy Company
<4> University
<5> Floating Wind Company
FMEAs employ subjective input data and generate subjective
results without physical meanings. Accordingly, one cannot
even convincingly validate the results by objective informa-
tion let alone determine parameters (weights) by computa-
tional techniques such as simulations based on the
probabilistic theory. Hence, this paper extracted weights of
indices from a published literature. However, system engi-
neering methods like Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) or
data science technologies e.g. information fusion may be
promising methods to ascertain weights of indices in the
future.
3.2. Results
3.2.1. The FMEA results of failure cases
The identification of failure causes is the initial step of con-
ducting failure analysis of complex systems. Failure causes are root
reasons instead of consequences of failures, by contrast, conse-
quences are failure modes. However, the relationship between
failure causes and failure modes is not deterministic. To be specific,
failure causes are always existing and may randomly give rise to a
certain or a group of failure modes, but on most occasions, the
system will survive and continue to work. For instance, cyclic
degradation of anchors (MS-FM4-#19) is one of the root failure
causes of anchor failure in the mooring system, the degradation
starts at the initiation of the support structure of the floating
offshore installed. Nevertheless, the failure will happen only if the
amount of degradation exceeds limitations.
Secondly, the mapping relations between failure modes and the
corresponding failure causes are not one-to-one. This indicates that
a selection of failure modes may share the same failure cause(s)
with others, and as a consequence incur correlations to themselves.
For example, strong wind/wave (TT-FM6-#24, TT-FM9-#36, and FF-
FM10-#40) can result in both failure modes: tower collapse and
transition piece crack. The two failures, subsequently, are corre-
lated, which will increase the failure rate of the support structures
compared with the situation of no correlations exist. The second
idea, however, is under the topic of reliability estimation rather
than failure analysis (the subject of this paper) so the relationships
among failure modes and the failure rate of the support structure
will not be discussed in this study.
Overall, RPNs of 56 failure causes were computed with an
average of 0.0179 as well as a mid-value of 0.0178, see Fig. 3. The
failure causes of the support structure are divided into five cate-
gories as they would provide a guide to practitioners by the aspects
of which failures depend [15,19]:
(i) material-related factors (e.g. wear, fatigue, degradation, etc.,
see Fig. 3a);
(ii) design-related factors (e.g. abnormal stress, resonance, etc.,
see Fig. 3b);
(iii) human-related factors (e.g. not effective maintenance,
insufficient emergency measurement, human error, etc., see
Fig. 3c);
Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145
Duty Working Period Country
System Design 4 Years China
Components Design 3 Years China
Quality Engineer 4 Years China
Researcher 6 Years China
Chief Technical Officer 11 years Spain
(iv) environment-related factors (e.g. strong wind/wave, light-
ning strike, poor operation environment, etc., see Fig. 3d);
(v) unavoidable and unknown factors (e.g. anchor pickup device
damage, abnormal working conditions, biological collision,
etc., see Fig. 3e).
The unavoidable and unknown failure causes contribute 36.5%
RPN to the support structure with an average RPN share of 1.8%,
followed by material-related failure causes (32.6%, 1.8%), human-
related failure causes (13.9%, 1.7%), environment-related failure
causes (8.3%, 1.7%), and design-related failure causes (6.9%, 1.7%).
Specifically, material fatigue of the tower (TT-FM8-#31, contributes
7.4% RPN to the total material-related failure causes), as well as
fairlead fatigue (MS-FM3-#17, 6.8%) and mooring lines fatigue (MS-
FM1-#2, 6.5%), make up the most RPN compared to the remaining
failure causes that related to material-related failure causes. Simi-
larly, abnormal stress of mooring lines (MS-FM1-#4, 31%) and
strong wind/wave (TT-FM6-#24, TT-FM9-#36, and FF-FM10-#40,
51.7%) are the riskiest design-related and environment-related
failure causes, respectively. Meanwhile, faulty welding of the
tower (TT-FM8-#30, 15.46%), human error (MS-FM5-#22, 14.56%),
and faulty welding of the of transition piece (TT-FM9-#37, 13.17%)
are principal human-related failure causes. Planes crash (FF-FM10-
#38, 6.28%), bilge piping/pumps fail (FF-FM12-#54, 5.74%), the
dynamic umbilical connection fails (FF-FM12-#51, 5.55%) of the
floating foundation together with plastic elements deformation of
transition piece (TT-FM9-#34, 5.54%) are recognized to be the
critical unavoidable and unknown failure causes.
The recognition of essential reasons for failure is of the great
importance to providing suggestions of corrections and recom-
mendations for preventive actions to the safe and economic oper-
ations of the support structure and even floating offshore wind
turbines (see section 3.3). At this point, 27 critical failure causes of
the support structure are selected and are listed in Table 3, for that
the RPN shares of those failure causes are more significant than
both the average as well as the mid-value of the total failure causes.
Generally, fatigue, wear, and corrosion are more decisive failure
causes than degradation and deformation, the same as has been
concluded in Refs. [16,26]. The material factors such as wear and
corrosion are the riskiest failure causes giving rise to higher fre-
quency of failures and pulling up the economic loss to wind tur-
bines. Harsh environmental conditions such as strong wind/wave
are recognized to be fatal failure causes of the collapse of the
floating support structure (agreed with [18]).
The extreme marine environment represents one of the top
failure causes of mooring lines of floating offshore wind turbines.
As for the critical failure causes namely strong wind/wave, it should
be noted that: (i) Strong wind/wave in this analysis is an integrated
root failure reason that comprised of TT-FM6-#24, TT-FM9-#36,
and FF-FM10-#40. Obviously, strong wind and wave is the root
cause of FM6, FM9, and FM10 and further brings failures to tower
and transition piece system and floating foundation system.
Accordingly, FM6, FM9, and FM10 are correlated, which further
confirms that the failure dependency between the tower and
transition piece system and floating foundation system needs
137
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

Fig. 3. RPNs of the floating support structure. (a) Material-related failure causes; (b) design-related failure causes; (c) human-related failure causes; (d) environment-related failure
causes; (e) unavoidable and unknown failure causes; TT-FM6-#24 represents TT-FM6-#24, TT-FM9-#36, and FF-FM10-#40.

138
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

Table 3
Critical failure causes of the offshore wind support structure.

System FC RPN Share FC Categories System FC RPN Share FC Categories

MS MS-FM3-#17 2.20% MRF TT TT-FM8-#31 2.24% MRF

MS-FM1-#2 2.10% TT-FM9-#34 2.02%
MS-FM1-#1 1.94% TT-FM9-#35 1.93%
MS-FM2-#9 1.94% TT-FM9-#33 1.85%
MS-FM3-#16 1.90% TT-FM8-#30 2.16% HRF
MS-FM1-#3 1.84% TT-FM9-#37 1.84%
MS-FM4-#19 1.84% TT-FM9-#36 1.83% ERF
MS-FM2-#6 1.82% FF FF-FM12-#54 2.10% UUF
MS-FM1-#4 2.00% DRF FF-FM12-#51 2.03%
MS-FM5-#22 2.06% HRF FF-FM12-#56 1.97%
MS-FM2-#10 1.97% UUF FF-FM12-#52 1.95%
MS-FM2-#14 1.89% FF-FM12-#53 1.81%
MS-FM2-#11 1.84% FF-FM10-#38 2.29% HRF
MS-FM2-#12 1.83%

FC: Failure Cause; MRF: Material-Related Factor; HRF: Human-Related Factor; DRF: Design-Related Factor; UUF: Unavoidable and Unknown Factor; ERF: Environment-Related
Factor.

Fig. 4. RPNs of failure modes as well as systems of the support structure.

particular attention. The strong wind and wave that is experienced
by floating offshore wind turbines is one of the main reasons that
makes the floating offshore wind turbine more fragile than onshore
structures by pulling up their failure rates and the severity of failure
consequences.
The conclusion is confirmed by Refs. [11,20,37,41], which
demonstrated: (i) The failure rate of offshore wind turbine (espe-
cially floating structures) are higher than onshore devices that in a
similar configuration due mainly to harsh sea conditions; (ii) Strong
wind/wave makes failures of floating offshore wind turbines riskier
than onshore devices by giving rise failures mainly to support
structures; (iii) The support structure is the most critical system of
floating offshore wind turbines.
3.2.2. The FMEA results of failure modes and systems
Identification of critical assemblies and prioritization of the
corresponding failure modes have operational superiorities as
maintenance resources can be distributed as timely as possible to
those parts of the support structure. As a consequence to cut down
downtime, failure rate, operational risk, and even cost of the energy
production of floating offshore wind turbines, meanwhile, to
139
guarantee the reliability, availability, and even energy production
efficiency of the facilities as mentioned above.
Unlike failure causes that sometimes cannot be observed, failure
modes are presentations of failures and can be observed according
to the state of the system. Failure modes are the most visible and
easy-to-access characteristics for carrying out failure or risk anal-
ysis of systems. Thus, identification of failure modes has the ad-
vantages in at least three aspects: (i) find out the failure behaviour
of the system analysed (for instance, collapse, vibration, and crack
are observed to be common failure behaviours of the tower of the
support structure). (ii) assess the consequence and the effect (local
and global) of a failure to the system (for example, tower collapse
causes substantial economic loss and potentially personal injury).
(iii) ensure safe and reliable operations of systems by suggesting
preventive actions to avoid the occurrence of critical failure modes
(e.g. find out measures against the mooring lines broken).
Overall, RPNs of 12 failure modes of 3 systems were computed
according to the proposed FMEA methodology, see Fig. 4. The
mooring system was identified as the uppermost critical system of
the support structure followed by the floating foundation as well as
the tower and transition piece system, whose RPNs are 0.4242,
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares
0.3188, and 0.2569, respectively. The above result is supported by
Ref. [18] where the mooring system was identified to be the higher
risk assembly of the support structure. However, knowing that 23
failure causes of the mooring system were collected, which can be
compared with that only 14 items of the tower and transition piece
and 19 items of the floating foundation of the support structure
were considered, respectively.
Considering that the proposed FMEA technique generates the
RPN of a failure mode by the summation of the corresponding
failure causes’ RPNs, which indicates that more failure causes
considered to a failure mode (more failure modes of a system)
higher the RPN will be produced. Hence, the average RPNs of each
failure mode in three systems are computed as a basis to analyze
the importance of failures from the average point of view, that are,
0.08 (mooring system), 0.08 (tower and transition piece), and 0.11
(floating foundation) respectively.
The rank in descending order of failure modes according to the
RPNs are: mooring lines broken (MS, contribute 18.12% RPN to the
total), additional structures fail of floating foundation (FF, 17.64%),
transition piece crack (TT, 11.16%), irregular mooring lines (MS,
9.55%), watertight fault of the floating foundation (FF, 8.5%), tower
collapse (TT, 8.27%), abnormal functions of the mooring system
(MS, 7.18%), the floating foundation hit by dropped objects (FF,
5.74%), tower crack (TT, 4.55%), fairlead failure (MS, 4.11%), anchor
failure (MS, 3.47%), and abnormal vibration of the tower (TT, 1.71%).
With the aforementioned rank, five failure modes of the support
structure are identified particular critical than others, that are,
mooring lines broken result mostly from material-related factors
(e.g. fatigue and wear of mooring lines or other auxiliary chains),
additional structures fail of the floating foundation mainly caused
by element collapses (e.g. manholes, sensors, vents, etc.), transition
piece crack mainly caused by degradation and material-related
factor (e.g. fatigue, corrosion, and deformation), irregular mooring
lines resulted from material-related factor (e.g. fatigue wear of
mooring lines), watertight of the floating foundation fault incurred
by human error (like pipe joint weld defect and inefficient detec-
tion) and material-related factors (e.g. fatigue and corrosion). The
five failure modes each contribute a significant RPN than remaining
ones and give rise to some 65% of RPNs to the support structure.
Specifically, the values of occurrence (0.3731) of the floating
foundation is higher than that of severity (0.2649) as well as
detection (0.3292), which indicates that the floating foundation
fails frequently and may not cause disastrous consequence to the
support structure. However, the floating wind farms are usually
located far from shore, and such failure modes with high likelihood
but mild effects would incur tremendous maintenance cost to the
floating offshore wind turbine [42]. Moreover, transition piece
crack (not previously studied) occupy the first and the third higher
risk failure modes of the tower and transition piece system and the
floating support structure, respectively. Failures related to mooring
lines, including mooring lines broken and abnormal mooring lines,
both give rise to 27.3% RPN to the entire structure. Accordingly,
mooring lines are announced to be the riskiest components of the
support structure, and the result concluded is proved by Ref. [18],
where mooring lines are selected as the most hazardous compo-
nent of the support structure. Unlike mooring lines failures whose
RPNs are mostly incurred by severity, the watertight fault was
identified as the most critical failure mode of the floating founda-
tion because of the higher value of occurrence assigned according
to its relative high failure frequency.
3.3. Recommendations
The aim of carrying out the failure analysis is to identify then to
clear the external and intrinsic failure behaviour and features of
140
Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145
failures of the support structure. Accordingly, critical systems,
components, failure modes, and failure causes of the support
structure can be ascertained as a basis to reasonably suggest rec-
ommendations and preventive actions for significant concerns of
stakeholders such as (i) safe and reliable operations; (ii) lower and
predictable failure rate; (iii) logical and economic maintenance
schedule determination, and; (iv) life cycle costs reduction of the
support structure.
Mooring lines are the weak links of the support structure, ac-
cording to the results in section 3.2, for which contribute 64.3% and
some 27.3% of RPNs to the mooring system and the support
structure. The operators are suggested to pay particular attention to
mooring lines to keep them free from catastrophic failures.
Considering that material-related failure factors (e.g. fatigue, wear,
and corrosion as well as design-related factors like abnormal stress)
are main causes of mooring lines failures, preventive actions e.g.
strength enforcement and a larger safety threshold are suggested at
the design and manufacturing stages of mooring lines (supported
by the results in Ref. [18]). On the other hand, the severity (the
consequences) of the mooring lines failures are notable, their
detection and occurrence values of such failure modes, however,
are relatively low reflecting that the likelihoods of happenings of
such failures are not remarkable. Hence, periodical inspections of
the mooring system, especially to the mooring lines, are
recommended.
The failures of the floating foundation happened frequently
with minor consequences, for instance, sensors or control systems
failures may lead to the low efficiency of the wind turbines energy
generation but will not give rise to a catastrophic consequence like
shutting down. Hence, for failures of floating foundation, moni-
toring measures to mechanical elements and backups for electrical
components (e.g. sensors) are highly recommended at the system
design stage of the support structure.
Harsh weather conditions (e.g. strong wind/wave and lightning
strike) are the leading causes of the tower and transition piece
system failures such as transition piece crack and tower collapse.
Accordingly, the robust design against weather conditions is of
great need. Besides, faulty welding of transition piece (TT-FM9-
#37) and tower (TT-FM8-#30) is also recognized as the critical
reasons for the crack of the transition piece and the tower, which
require additional attention to the welding process of
manufacturing.
It should be noticed that failures and malfunctions of the
mooring system and the floating foundation need particular
attention than failures of towers. For one thing, even though fail-
ures of the tower mostly result in severe consequences such as
offshore wind turbine damage but those failures are infrequent and
can be detected by monitoring and inspection devices. Further-
more, the mooring system and the floating foundation are designed
to ensure the stable energy generation of floating offshore wind
turbines which much larger and higher than onshore ones (the
largest now over 250 m high). Movements of the mooring system
and the floating foundation, mainly result from harsh environ-
mental conditions, could lead to oscillations of the upper structures
such as blades and nacelle and would further be risky to the whole
wind turbine. To this end, the auxiliary system design of the
mooring system especially for mooring lines to balance the impact
of weather conditions such as strong wave/wind would be a chal-
lenging task to be considered for designers.
4. Comparisons
Comparison analysis between the results of the proposed FMEA
and that reached by conventional technology is implemented
aiming at clarifying their similarities and differences of failure
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

analysis, see Appendix C. The proposed method extends the
traditional methodology of FMEA by considering the weights of
severity, occurrence, and detection. The results of the comparison
at both failure modes (12 failure modes) as well as systems (3
systems) levels of the support structure of the floating offshore
wind turbine are demonstrated in Table 4.
At the system level, an important agreement of the two methods
is that the mooring system was recognized to the most critical
system of the floating offshore wind turbine for that:
(i) 23 failure causes of the mooring system were analysed as a
comparison only 14, and 19 failure causes were considered
for the tower and transition piece and the floating founda-
tion systems, respectively. More failure causes collected
produces a larger RPN of a system because the RPN of a
system is computed as the sum of its failure modes which is
the result of all failure causes.
(ii) the severity of the failure causes of the mooring system is not
significantly higher than others. Specifically, the average
value of the severity of the mooring system is 5.64 which can
be compared with that of the tower and transition piece
(7.73) and the floating foundation (4.51) system. However,
the proposed methodology distributed the highest weight
for severity, which increased the RPN of the mooring system.
Moreover, an unremarkable disagreement (less than 3%
discrepancy of RPN share) of the two methods is due to the
different RPN rank for the tower and transition piece system
as well as the floating foundation system. This difference is
primarily due to the severity and occurrence values of the
floating foundation system (the average severity and occur-
rence values of each failure cause are 4.51 and 4.82, respec-
tively). The values are higher than that of the tower and
transition piece system (7.67 and 3.46) following the
explained by Ref. [11], in which the failure rate of the floating
foundation is predicted higher than that of the tower.
At the failure modes level, 3 failure modes were identified as the
most critical failure modes of the support structure, which lead to
about 47% of RPNs to the whole structure according to the results of
both techniques. Specifically, mooring lines broken (MS-FM2),
additional structures of floating foundation failures (FF-FM12), and
transition piece crack (TT-FM9) are critical failure modes that
agreed by both methods. Mooring lines broken, instead of
abnormal functions of the mooring system was identified to be one
of the critical failure modes, for the former is much more severe
than the later. The comparison results of critical failure modes are
in line with the idea of the proposed technique, that is, taking the
severity of failures more severe than other indices by assigning the
weights of severity, occurrence, and detection as 0.4, 0.35. 0.25
respectively. On the other hand, the idea of the proposed FMEA
showed that a failure mode with a severer consequence generates a
higher RPN. In contrast, the ranks of the failure modes with less
severity (like fairlead failure, abnormal functions of the mooring
system, etc.) decreased remarkably. On this basis, the proposed
technique can be considered more flexible than conventional
FMEAs.
The purpose of the failure analysis utilizing FMEAs is to select
critical failure items (failure causes or failure modes, etc.) by
computing their corresponding RPNs. However, when different
failure items lead to the same RPN, engineers will not be able to
identify critical failure items from the others without introducing
new information. It should be noted that one merit of the proposed
technique is that the method can reduce the number of failure
items (failure causes or failure modes, etc.) with the same RPN. For
instance, by the conventional FMEA methodology, 3 pairs of failure
causes are calculated to have the same RPNs, that are, (i) accumu-
lator failure (MS) and transition piece corrosion (TT) (the RPN of
these failure items is 87.75), (ii) mooring lines corrosion (MS) and
hydraulic motor failure (MS) (79.06), and (iii) handrails corrosion
(FF) and ladders corrosion (FF) (55.78). Nevertheless, no similar
situations were found according to the results achieved by the
proposed FMEA methodology.
5. Conclusions
This paper extends the traditional failure mode and effect

Table 4
The comparison of the proposed and the conventional FMEAs results.

Code Systems/Failure Modes RPN Rank of RPN Rank of Proposed Rank Changes
Conventional FMEA FMEA

RPN share Rank RPN share Rank Amounts In/de-crease

MS Mooring system 46.52% 1 42.42% 1 e e

TT Tower and transition piece 23.84% 2 25.69% 3 1

FF Floating foundation 29.65% 3 31.88% 2 1

MS-FM1 Abnormal mooring line 11.29% 4 9.55% 4 e e

MS-FM2 Mooring lines broken 18.28% 1 18.12% 1 e e
MS-FM3 Fairlead failure 5.87% 8 4.11% 10 2

MS-FM4 Anchor failure 3.44% 11 3.47% 11 e e

MS-FM5 Abnormal functions of the mooring system 7.64% 5 7.18% 7 2

TT-FM6 Tower collapse 3.52% 10 8.27% 6 4

TT-FM7 Abnormal vibration of the tower 1.33% 12 1.71% 12 e e

TT-FM8 Tower crack 7.57% 6 4.55% 9 3

TT-FM9 Transition piece crack 11.41% 3 11.16% 3 e e

FF-FM10 Floating foundation hit by dropped objects 6.79% 7 5.74% 8 1

FF-FM11 Watertight fault 5.18% 9 8.5% 5 4

FF-FM12 Additional structures fail 17.67% 2 17.64% 2 e e

141
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

analysis methodology by considering the weight of indices of the Appendix A. Proof of consistency of RPNs for implementing
method that are severity, occurrence, and detection as a basis to the generalization approach
analyze failures of a support structure of a generic floating offshore
wind turbine. The unavoidable and unknown factors failure causes, Consider three possible average values of the failure cause i of
e.g. devices failures, material-related failure causes such as fatigue, the failure mode j (for instance values of severity), that are, bSði1Þj ,
wear, corrosion, and environment-related factors like strong wind/ bSðiÞj , and bSðiþ1Þj .
wave were recognized as the most critical failure causes of the Denote
floating support structure. Moreover, the failures of mooring lines
and the failures of transition pieces resulted in the most critical bSði1Þj < bSðiÞj < bSðiþ1Þj (A-1)
failure modes. Furthermore, the mooring system, which was
ascertained as the most important system calls for special attention Hence
due mainly to their remarkable severity of failures. On these basis,
recommendations on corrections and preventive actions for safe bSðiÞj bSði1Þj bSðiÞj  bSði1Þj
operation, for instance, enforcement of the strength of mooring Dii1 ¼ xSðiÞj  xSði1Þj ¼  ¼ >0
lines were reached. The comparison analysis between the results of
bSj bSj bSj
the conventional FMEA methodology and the proposed method (A-2)
proved that the proposed method is flexible in use and has merit in
removing the limitations of conventional FMEAs that usually
generate the same RPNs for several failure items. Overall, the pro-
bSðiþ1Þj bSðiÞj bSðiþ1Þj  bSðiÞj
Diþ1 ¼ xSðiþ1Þj  xSðiÞj ¼  ¼ >0
posed FMEA method is applicable to failure analysis of diverse
i
bSj bSj bSj
systems (not limited to support structures or the offshore wind (A-3)
energy sector).
Eqs. (A-2) and (A-3) confirm:

CRediT authorship contribution statement xSði1Þj < xSðiÞj < xSðiþ1Þj (A-4)

He Li: Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - Accordingly,

original draft. H. Diaz: Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization,
Writing - original draft. C. Guedes Soares: Writing - review & 1  xSðiÞj  xSði1Þj
editing, Supervision. Vii1 ¼ gSðiÞj  gSði1Þj ¼ fSðiÞj  fSði1Þj ¼ >0
n P
n
n xSij
i¼1

Declaration of competing interest (A-5)

Similarly,
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
1  xSðiþ1Þj  xSðiÞj
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Viþ1 ¼ gSðiþ1Þj  gSðiÞj ¼ fSðiþ1Þj  fSðiÞj ¼ >0
i n P
n
n xSij
i¼1
Acknowledgment (A-6)

This study was completed within the project ARCWIND - Eqs. (A-5) and (A-6) indicate:
Adaptation and implementation of floating wind energy conversion
technology for the Atlantic region, which is co-financed by the gSði1Þj < gSðiÞj < gSðiþ1Þj (A-7)
European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg
Atlantic Area Programme under contract EAPA 344/2016. The first Hence
author has been supported by the scholarship from China Schol-
2 3
arship Council (CSC) under Grant No. 201806070048. This work gSði1Þ j
contributes to the Strategic Research Plan of the Centre for Marine FC
RPNi1 ¼ ½ kS kO kD 4 gOij 5 < RPN FC
i
Technology and Ocean Engineering (CENTEC), which is financed by gDij
the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundaç~ ao 2 3
gSðiÞ j
^ncia e Tecnologia - FCT) under contract UIDB/UIDP/00134/
para a Cie ¼ ½ kS kO kD  gOij 5 < RPNiþ1
4 FC
2020. gDij
Companies and individuals who have involved in data collection 2 3
of this research are highly appreciated, including the Goldwind gSðiþ1Þ j
Science & Technology Co., Ltd. Beijing, China; the CSIS (Chongqing) ¼ ½ kS kO kD 4 gOij 5 (A-8)
Haizhuang Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd., Chongqing, China,
gDij
BlueNewables, Spain; Professor Guang-Jun Jiang at the Inner The proof processes for other indices e.g. occurrence and
Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, China; Hao-Peng Hu at detection follow the same procedure.
the CSIS (Chongqing) Haizhuang Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd.
Chongqing, China; Doctor Ji-Chuan Kang at the Harbin Engineering
University, Harbin, China; Doctor Cheng-Geng Huang at the Sun
Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China; Mr. Zi-Hao Wang at Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Mr. Bernardino Coun ~ ago
Lorenzo at BlueNewables, Spain.
142
H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

Appendix B. Failure modes and their causes and effects of the Appendix C. RPNs of failure causes/S, O, and D are severity,
support structure occurrence, and detection, respectively

Systems Code of Failure Modes Failure Effect Code of Failure Failure Causes A(S) A(O) A(D)
FM Causes

MS FM1 Abnormal mooring Mooring line strength decrease or broken #1 Mooring lines wear 5.75 5.25 3.50
line #2 Mooring lines fatigue 6.00 4.75 5.00
#3 Mooring lines corrosion 5.50 5.75 2.50
#4 Abnormal stress 5.50 4.50 5.00
#5 Not effective maintenance 5.50 3.75 3.25
FM2 Mooring lines Malfunction of the whole system, the FOWT cannot locate in #6 Transitional chain wear 6.50 4.00 3.25
broken the water #7 Friction chain wear 6.00 4.00 3.00
#8 Mooring winch failure 6.75 3.75 2.75
#9 Buoys friction chain wear 6.00 5.50 3.00
#10 Anchor pickup device damage 6.00 5.25 3.50
#11 Hydraulic motor failure 5.75 5.50 2.50
#12 Accumulator failure 6.00 4.50 3.25
#13 Overpressure 4.75 4.25 3.00
#14 Connectors failure 6.25 4.25 3.75
#15 Mooring interface structure 6.75 3.25 3.50
failure
FM3 Fairlead failure The anchor cannot be dropped and lift #16 Fairlead corrosion 5.50 4.50 4.25
#17 Fairlead fatigue 6.25 5.00 5.25
FM4 Anchor failure Anchor failure #18 Abnormal working conditions 5.25 4.00 3.00
#19 Cyclic degradation 5.00 4.00 4.75
FM5 Abnormal Anchoring accuracy decrease #20 Poor operation environment 4.50 4.75 3.25
functions #21 Insufficient emergency 4.75 5.00 3.25
measurement
#22 Human Error 4.75 6.00 4.50
#23 Analysis and calculation fault 4.75 3.75 4.25
A(S), A(O), and A(D) are the average values of severity, occurrence, and detection of the employed specialists.

Systems Code of Failure Modes Failure Effect Code of Failure Failure Causes A(S) A(O) A(D)
FM Causes

TT FM6 Tower collapse Failure of the whole FOWT and vast economic #24 Strong wind/wave 9.75 1.50 1.75
loses #25 Lightning Strike 9.25 2.50 2.00
#26 Hit by blades 9.50 1.25 1.50
#27 Ice storm 8.50 1.75 2.25
#28 Braking system failed 8.75 2.50 1.75
FM7 Abnormal vibration Potential collapse #29 Resonance 7.00 3.50 2.50
FM8 Crack Potential collapse #30 Faulty welding of Tower 7.25 5.25 3.75
#31 Material fatigue 7.50 5.75 4.75
FM9 Transition piece crack Potential collapse #32 Material fatigue 7.50 3.25 2.25
#33 Corrosion 6.75 4.00 3.25
#34 Plastic deformation 9.00 3.50 3.00
#35 Cyclic degradation 6.00 4.50 4.00
#36 Strong wind/wave 6.00 4.25 3.50
#37 Faulty welding 5.50 5.00 3.25
FF FM10 Hit by dropped objects Damage to the FOWT, vast economic loses #38 Planes crash 6.75 4.00 6.50
#39 Biological collision 5.00 5.00 3.25
#40 Strong wind/wave 5.00 5.50 2.00
FM11 Watertight fault Potential failure #41 Inefficient detection 4.50 4.25 1.50
#42 Pipe joint corrosion 4.75 3.50 2.75
#43 Pipe joint weld defect 3.00 4.75 2.75
#44 Pipe joint fatigue 3.00 4.75 3.00
#45 Pillar damage 3.75 3.25 3.00
#46 Excessive fouling of platform 3.25 4.25 3.25
FM12 Additional structures Potential failure #47 Navigation and work lights fail 4.00 4.50 1.75
fail #48 Helicopter assistance equipment 4.75 4.50 2.25
fail
#49 Handrails corrosion 4.25 5.25 2.50
#50 Ladders corrosion 3.75 4.25 3.50
#51 Dynamic umbilical connection fail 4.50 5.75 4.75
#52 Towing brackets/bollards fail 5.25 6.00 3.25
#53 Vents fail 5.00 5.00 3.50
#54 Bilge piping/pumps fail 4.50 6.00 5.00
#55 Sensors for platform monitoring 4.75 5.25 2.75
fail
#56 Manholes fail 6.00 5.75 3.00
A(S), A(O), and A(D) are the average values of severity, occurrence, and detection of the employed specialists.

143
 H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares
Failure Causes Conventional FMEA, S, O, D Proposed FMEA, Generalized S, O, D (0:1) with weights (0.4, Failure Causes Conventional FMEA, S, O, D Proposed FMEA, Generalized S, O, D (0:1) with weights
(1:10) 0.35, 0.25) (1:10) (0.4, 0.35, 0.25)

RPN RPN Share Rank S O D RPN RPN Share Rank RPN RPN Share Rank S O D RPN RPN Share Rank

MS-FM1-#1 105.7 2.30% 12 0.0178 0.0214 0.0191 0.0194 1.94% 14 TT-FM7-#29 61.3 1.33% 38 0.0216 0.0143 0.0137 0.0171 1.71% 35
MS-FM1-#2 142.5 3.10% 5 0.0185 0.0194 0.0273 0.0210 2.10% 5 TT-FM8-#30 142.7 3.11% 4 0.0224 0.0214 0.0205 0.0216 2.16% 4
MS-FM1-#3 79.1 1.72% 27 0.0170 0.0234 0.0137 0.0184 1.84% 20 TT-FM8-#31 204.8 4.46% 1 0.0232 0.0234 0.0260 0.0240 2.40% 1
MS-FM1-#4 123.8 2.70% 8 0.0170 0.0183 0.0273 0.0200 2.00% 10 TT-FM9-#32 54.8 1.19% 43 0.0232 0.0133 0.0123 0.0170 1.70% 37
MS-FM1-#5 67.0 1.46% 36 0.0170 0.0153 0.0178 0.0166 1.66% 41 TT-FM9-#33 87.8 1.91% 22 0.0208 0.0163 0.0178 0.0185 1.85% 19
MS-FM2-#6 84.5 1.84% 25 0.0201 0.0163 0.0178 0.0182 1.82% 26 TT-FM9-#34 94.5 2.06% 19 0.0278 0.0143 0.0164 0.0202 2.02% 9
MS-FM2-#7 72.0 1.57% 32 0.0185 0.0163 0.0164 0.0172 1.72% 33 TT-FM9-#35 108.0 2.35% 11 0.0185 0.0183 0.0219 0.0193 1.93% 16
MS-FM2-#8 69.6 1.52% 33 0.0208 0.0153 0.0150 0.0174 1.74% 31 TT-FM9-#36 89.3 1.94% 21 0.0185 0.0173 0.0191 0.0183 1.83% 25
MS-FM2-#9 99.0 2.16% 17 0.0185 0.0224 0.0164 0.0194 1.94% 15 TT-FM9-#37 89.4 1.95% 20 0.0170 0.0204 0.0178 0.0184 1.84% 22
MS-FM2-#10 110.3 2.40% 10 0.0185 0.0214 0.0191 0.0197 1.97% 12 FF-FM10-#38 175.5 3.82% 2 0.0208 0.0163 0.0355 0.0229 2.29% 2
MS-FM2-#11 79.1 1.72% 27 0.0178 0.0224 0.0137 0.0184 1.84% 23 FF-FM10-#39 81.3 1.77% 26 0.0154 0.0204 0.0178 0.0178 1.78% 29
144

MS-FM2-#12 87.8 1.91% 22 0.0185 0.0183 0.0178 0.0183 1.83% 24 FF-FM10-#40 55.0 1.20% 42 0.0154 0.0224 0.0109 0.0168 1.68% 40
MS-FM2-#13 60.6 1.32% 39 0.0147 0.0173 0.0164 0.0160 1.60% 46 FF-FM11-#41 28.7 0.63% 54 0.0139 0.0173 0.0082 0.0137 1.37% 55
MS-FM2-#14 99.6 2.17% 16 0.0193 0.0173 0.0205 0.0189 1.89% 18 FF-FM11-#42 45.7 1.00% 46 0.0147 0.0143 0.0150 0.0146 1.46% 50
MS-FM2-#15 76.8 1.67% 30 0.0208 0.0133 0.0191 0.0178 1.78% 28 FF-FM11-#43 39.2 0.85% 49 0.0093 0.0194 0.0150 0.0142 1.42% 53
MS-FM3-#16 105.2 2.29% 13 0.0170 0.0183 0.0232 0.0190 1.90% 17 FF-FM11-#44 42.8 0.93% 48 0.0093 0.0194 0.0164 0.0146 1.46% 51
MS-FM3-#17 164.1 3.57% 3 0.0193 0.0204 0.0287 0.0220 2.20% 3 FF-FM11-#45 36.6 0.80% 51 0.0116 0.0133 0.0164 0.0134 1.34% 56
MS-FM4-#18 63.0 1.37% 37 0.0162 0.0163 0.0164 0.0163 1.63% 43 FF-FM11-#46 44.9 0.98% 47 0.0100 0.0173 0.0178 0.0145 1.45% 52
MS-FM4-#19 95.0 2.07% 18 0.0154 0.0163 0.0260 0.0184 1.84% 21 FF-FM12-#47 31.5 0.69% 53 0.0124 0.0183 0.0096 0.0138 1.38% 54
MS-FM5-#20 69.5 1.51% 34 0.0139 0.0194 0.0178 0.0168 1.68% 38 FF-FM12-#48 48.1 1.05% 44 0.0147 0.0183 0.0123 0.0154 1.54% 49
MS-FM5-#21 77.2 1.68% 29 0.0147 0.0204 0.0178 0.0174 1.74% 32 FF-FM12-#49 55.8 1.22% 40 0.0131 0.0214 0.0137 0.0162 1.62% 44
MS-FM5-#22 128.3 2.79% 7 0.0147 0.0245 0.0246 0.0206 2.06% 7 FF-FM12-#50 55.8 1.22% 40 0.0116 0.0173 0.0191 0.0155 1.55% 48
MS-FM5-#23 75.7 1.65% 31 0.0147 0.0153 0.0232 0.0170 1.70% 36 FF-FM12-#51 122.9 2.68% 9 0.0139 0.0234 0.0260 0.0203 2.03% 8
TT-FM6-#24 25.6 0.56% 55 0.0301 0.0061 0.0096 0.0166 1.66% 42 FF-FM12-#52 102.4 2.23% 15 0.0162 0.0245 0.0178 0.0195 1.95% 13
TT-FM6-#25 46.3 1.01% 45 0.0286 0.0102 0.0109 0.0177 1.77% 30 FF-FM12-#53 87.5 1.91% 24 0.0154 0.0204 0.0191 0.0181 1.81% 27
TT-FM6-#26 17.8 0.39% 56 0.0293 0.0051 0.0082 0.0156 1.56% 47 FF-FM12-#54 135.0 2.94% 6 0.0139 0.0245 0.0273 0.0210 2.10% 6
TT-FM6-#27 33.5 0.73% 52 0.0263 0.0071 0.0123 0.0161 1.61% 45 FF-FM12-#55 68.6 1.49% 35 0.0147 0.0214 0.0150 0.0171 1.71% 34
TT-FM6-#28 38.3 0.83% 50 0.0270 0.0102 0.0096 0.0168 1.68% 39 FF-FM12-#56 103.5 2.26% 14 0.0185 0.0234 0.0164 0.0197 1.97% 11

Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

H. Li, H. Diaz and C. Guedes Soares Renewable Energy 164 (2021) 133e145

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