Proceedings

Proceedingsof
ofthe
theASME
ASME2011
2011 30th
30th International
International Conference
Conferenceon
on Ocean,
Ocean,Offshore
Offshore and
andArctic
Arctic Engineering
Engineering
OMAE2011
OMAE2011
June
June 19-24,
19-24, 2011,
2011, Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The
The Netherlands
Netherlands

OMAE2011- 50329
OMAE2011-
Study on the Dynamic Response for Floating Foundation of Offshore Wind Turbine

TANG Yougang, HU Jun, LIU Liqin*

Tianjin University School of Civil Engineering & Key Laboratory of Harbor & Ocean Engineering Ministry of Education
Tianjin 300072,China

ABSTRACT
The wind resources for ocean power generation are mostly
distributed in sea areas with the distance of 5-50km from coastline,
whose water depth are generally over 20m. To improve ocean power
output and economic benefit of offshore wind farm, it is necessary to
choose floating foundation for offshore wind turbine. According to
the basic data of a 600kW wind turbine with a horizontal shaft, the
tower, semi-submersible foundation and mooring system are
designed in the 60-meter-deep sea area. Precise finite element models
of the floating wind turbine system are established, including
mooring lines, floating foundation, tower and wind turbine. Dynamic
responses for the floating foundation of offshore wind turbine are
investigated under wave load in frequency domain.
INTRODUCTION
The support structures for offshore wind turbines can be
divided into fixed and floating foundations. The loads induced
by operational wind turbine and marine environment are main
loads that have an important impact on floating foundation.
Investigation on the couple between aerodynamics and
hydrodynamics is a very difficult question[1]. Research about
floating foundation for offshore wind turbine has begun since
1990s. Tong evaluated a scheme that a wind turbine was
installed on a Spar platform with catenary lines for mooring
[2]. Bertacchi et al put forward a floating foundation to install
wind turbine[3]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has
studied floating foundations for offshore wind turbine from
2005[4]. Their main task is to develop the method of dealing
with the couple between aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. A
floating wind turbine concept named Hywind was founded in
Norway, the floating foundation is like a Spar platform[5].
Fulton et al indicated that a semi-submersible hull can be used
as a floating foundation for wind turbine[6]. Dominique
Roddier et al proposed some considerations for designing a
floating wind turbine system, their opinions promoted the
progress of investigation on floating foundation[7]. In this
paper, a concept design of a floating foundation for a small
wind turbine are proposed, the finite element models of the
floating wind turbine system are established in SESAM, the
weight of wind turbine is considered and dynamic responses
are calculated in frequency domain under wave action.
The results have some referenced value for the design of
floating foundations for offshore wind turbines.
MAIN STRUCTURE OF FLOATING FOUNDATION
FOR THE 600KW WIND TURBINE
The design wind speed is 14m/s, rotor diameter is 43.2m,
nacelle mass is 26.5t, and rotor mass is 13t include three
blades. There are three columns to provide sufficient
buoyancy. Three horizontal water-entrapment plates with large
size are located at the base of columns. There are box beams
to support water-entrapment plates. In order to reduce the
height of center of gravity, 12 ballast tanks with the height of
4.8m inside columns are designed. The ballast tanks are filled
with seawater, the capacity of each ballast tank is 33.76m3.
Three columns are spread out as to form an equilateral
triangle between their centers. The distance between column
centers is 48m. There are longitudinal, transverse and
horizontal bulkheads, ring and vertical stiffeners are arranged
inside columns. T-beams and angle iron are suspended
beneath the longitudinally-framed deck. Geometrical model of
the floating wind turbine system is shown in Figure 1.The
total mass of wind turbine, control cabinet and blades is
indicated by the block on the top of column, the
aero-dynamics induced by rotating blades is acted on the top
block. The system is anchored to the seabed using 6
conventional chains, and the main parameters of the mooring
chain are shown in Table 1. The main structures and the global
parameters of the floating wind turbine system are shown in
Table 1 and Table 2 respectively.

*Author of correspondence Figure 1 Geometrical model of floating wind turbine system

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 Table 1 Main parameters of mooring chain amplitude, K is the wave number, d is the water depth, 
Nominal diameter of chain 0.078m is the direction of wave propagation. D and R are
Mass of chain per meter 133.20kg calculated by boundary element method. Firstly, wet surface
Axial stiffness of chain 520577.46kN of the floating wind turbine system is discreted into many
Length of chain 137.5m elements. Then assume that the wave potential within each
Pretension of chain 287.37kN element can be expressed as a function of nodal potential, and
collocation method or Galerkin method is used to establish
Table 2 Main structures of the floating wind turbine system linear equations of nodal potential. Finally the potential of
Outside and inside diameter of 14m, 6m each node is calculated. According to linearized Bernoulli
water-entrapment plates equation, wave load on the floating wind turbine system is
Side length of box beams 0.14m obtained.
Diameter and height of columns 6m, 18m
Diameter of big bracings 1m FINITE ELEMENT MODELS OF THE FLOATING WIND
Diameter of small bracings 0.8m TURBINE SYSTEM
Diameter and height of wind converter support 4.5m, 31m In order to calculate the hydrodynamic load on the
column
floating wind turbine system, panel model and Morison model
Height, top and bottom diameter of tower 18m, 3m,
4.5m are established, shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3. Composite
model composed by panel model and Morison model is used
Table 3 Global parameters of the floating wind turbine system in this paper to calculate wave load, shown in Figure 4. The
Total mass of floating wind turbine system 1051.63t arrangement of mooring lines is shown in Figure 5.
COG of floating wind turbine system (0，0，9.3m)
Designed water depth and draft 60m，9m
Radius of gyration (Rxx，Ryy，Rzz) 20m，20m，22.7m

WAVE LOAD AND FINITE ELEMENT MODELS OF

FLOATING WIND TURBINE SYSTEM
Wave load on small-scale structure such as horizontal
and oblique bracings is calculated through Morison equation.
The basic Morison equation used in this paper is as follows:

 D2 1
dF dFI  dFD   x )dz   CD D u  x (u  x )dz
(CM u C A  (1)
4 2 Figure 2 Panel model

where dFI and dFD are the inertia load and drag force,  is
fluid density, CM and C A are the inertia and added mass
coefficient, CD is drag coefficient, u and u are the
velocity and acceleration of wave particle normal to the
structural axis, x and x are the velocity and acceleration
of the structure normal to its axis.
There is a quadratic term in Equation (1). When a wave
spectrum is used to calculate dynamic response in frequency
domain, the quadratic term in Equation (2) is linearized[8]:
Figure 3 Morison model
8 2
u-x (u - x )   (u - x ) (2)
3 u

where  u is the standard deviation of velocity of wave


particle,  u2   Su ( )d , Su ( ) is the spectrum of velocity
0
of wave particle which can be derived from wave spectrum.
Wave load on large-scale structure such as columns, wind
converter support column and water-entrapment plates is
calculated through Three Dimensional Diffraction theory. The
wave potential  is decomposed into incident potential I ,
diffraction potential D and radiation potential R . The
incident potential is as follows: Figure 4 Composite model

igA cosh( Kz+d )  K ( x cos   y sin  )

I  e (3)
ω cosh Kd
where g is the acceleration of gravity, A is the wave

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 are given in Table 4. A JONSWAP spectrum is used for wave
elevation process.

Table 4 Parameters of wave spectrums

Significant wave 2.5m 3m 4m 5m
height
Peak period 7s 8s 9s 10s

2
The directional function is G ( )  cos 2  . Actually, the

Figure 5 Mooring lines floating foundation is symmetrical, so the directions of wave
propagation are from 0 to 180 degrees. The dynamic
METHOD TO CALCULATE THE DYNAMIC responses under the JONSWAP spectrum with the significant
RESPONSE IN FREQUENCY DOMAIN wave height of 5m are shown in Figure 6 to Figure 11.
Considering the first-order wave potential only, dynamic These calculations are performed in SESAM. SESAM is a
equilibrium equation of the floating wind turbine system is as universal software in ocean engineering that can be used to set
follows: up structure model, calculate structure strength, floating
hydrodynamics, structure motion and the vortex-induced
  2 ( M  A( )) i ( B ( ) p  Bv )C+Ce  X ( , )  F ( , ) (4) vibration of the riser etc [9]. The results in SESAM are
showing from Figure 6-11.
where  is the incident wave frequency,  is the direction
of wave propagation, M is the body inertia matrix, A( ) is
the 6 by 6 frequency dependent added mass matrix, B ( ) p is
the frequency dependent potential damping matrix, Bv is the
linearized viscous damping matrix, C is the hydrostatic
restoring matrix, Ce is the restoring matrix of mooring lines,
X ( ,  ) is the body motion vector, F ( ,  ) is the wave
load vector.
Transfer functions are used to describe the dynamic responses
for floating body in harmonic waves with unit wave amplitude.
With a transfer function H ( ,  ) , the corresponding time
dependent response variable R ( , ,t ) can be expressed as
follows:

R ( ,  , t )  A  Re  H ( ,  )ei ( t  )  (5)

Where A is the wave amplitude,  is the incident wave

frequency,  is the direction of wave propagation, t is the Figure 6 Roll RAO (unit：degree)
time, H ( , ) is the transfer function.
Assumption: 1. both motion of wave particle and floating
body are stationary ergodic random processes, 2. floating
system is linear, 3. spectrums of wave and dynamic response
of floating body are narrow-band spectrums, then the
relationship between the wave spectrum S ( ) and the
response spectrum S R ( ) is as follows:

S R ( )  S ( ) H ( )
2
(6)

RESULTS OF THE DYNAMIC RESPONSE IN

FREQUENCY DOMAIN
The dynamic responses of the floating wind turbine
system are calculated in frequency domain under wave load
only. When a wave spectrum is used to calculate wave load on
small-scale structures, the quadratic term should be linearized
according to the Equation (2). For each regular wave, the
8 2
same coefficient  u is used in Morison equation. CM is
3
2, C A is 1 and CD is 0.7. Dynamic responses are analyzed Figure 7 Pitch RAO (unit：degree)
and four middle sea-states are presented in this paper, which

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 Figure 8 Heave RAO (unit：m) Figure 11 Heave spectrum (unit： m 2 s )

The results in SESAM indicate that both transverse and

longitudinal metacentric heights of the designed floating wind
turbine system are 23.8m, the natural periods for heave, roll
and pitch are 11.7s, 14.4s and 14.4s respectively as Figure
9-11 showing. Roll and pitch are notably influenced by the
regular wave with the period of about 14 seconds as Figure 6
and Figure 7 showing. Heave is significantly amplified when
the period of the regular wave is about 12 seconds as Figure 8
showing. Main wave energy is concentrated in the period
range of 4 to 12 seconds. From the calculation results, it is
known that the roll and pitch motion of the floating turbine
system can avoid main wave energy basically, nevertheless, it
is possible that the heave motion resonance will occur.

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the floating foundation for a 600kW wind
turbine with a horizontal shaft is designed. Precise finite
element models are established and the dynamic responses of
the floating wind turbine system are calculated in frequency
domain for four sea states by SESAM software. The main
Figure 9 Roll spectrum (unit： m 2 s )
conclusions of this paper are as follows:
(1)In order to improve the stability and optimize the motion
performance of floating wind turbine system, the height of
center of gravity should be lower, so it is necessary to arrange
symmetrical ballast tanks at the bases of columns.
(2)The dynamic results in frequency domain show that roll
and pitch are notably influenced by the regular wave with the
period of about 14 seconds. Heave is significantly amplified
when the period of the regular wave is about 12 seconds. The
pitch and roll motion of designed floating wind turbine system
can avoid main wave energy, but, it is possible that heave
resonance will occur, so, it is necessary to change the natural
heave frequency furthermore.
(3) The water-entrapment plate is similar to the heave plate of
Spar platform. The large-scale water-entrapment plates can
increase damping and added water. However, the additional
wave load induced by the water-entrapment plates will occur.
Therefore, whether water-entrapment plates are beneficial
depends on both water depth and the draft of floating wind
turbine system.

Figure 10 Pitch spectrum (unit： m 2 s ) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The paper was supported by the science and technology development

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 project of Tianjin and NSFC under Grant No.50879057.

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