Dynamic Assessment of Offshore Wind Turbines using Fully Integrated Load Simulations

Project Description

Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions has led to the development of renewable energy technologies in order to de-carbonise our energy sector. Offshore wind energy has been demonstrated as a viable clean energy source. Ireland plans to provide 70% of electricity demand from renewable sources by 2030 where offshore wind is one of the main sources. Offshore wind turbine structure is a unique type of structure due to the geometry (e.g. mass and stiffness distribution along the height) and the loads acting on it. The environmental loads are a mixture of cyclic and dynamic components which depends on the location of the turbine and its size and type. Offshore wind turbines are generally designed for a minimum of 20 years of service life. Their fatigue life is directly linked to the stress induced by the structural vibrations due to environmental loading. As a dynamic system, the magnitude of the response of an OWT depends on the amplitude of the applied forces, the proximity of the natural frequencies to the dominant forcing frequencies and the damping. Therefore, true understanding of dynamic behaviour of these structures is an important step in their design process. This PhD project brings together Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions; a specialist consultancy with extensive experience of the offshore renewables sector in Ireland and abroad and Centre for Critical Infrastructure Research (CCIR) at University College Dublin (UCD). The objective of this project is to provide a fully integrated dynamic assessment for offshore wind turbines under various loading conditions. This includes fully coupled models of turbine and support structure considering soil modelling. This model will be ultimately used to improve fatigue design of offshore wind turbines.