• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.184-192
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• 2017

The Korea Offshore Wind Power (KWOP) cooperation is planning to construct offshore wind energy farms with an overall rated power of 2.5 GW along the southwestern coast by 2019. Hitherto, various structural types of support structures for offshore wind turbines have been being proposed, but these structures have lacked economic analysis studies. Therefore, their economical superiority to existing types has been difficult to guarantee. An offshore structure with economic efficiency will have a minimum amount of mobilizing equipment and short offshore construction period because of the application of rapid installation methods. Thus, the development of a new support structure with economic efficiency is generally considered to be necessary. Accordingly, this paper proposes a newly developed and more economical jacket type for the offshore support structure. This study confirmed its structural safety and performance by conducting a structural analysis and eigenvalue analysis. The manufacturing and installation costs were then estimated. As a result, the new jacket type of offshore support structure proposed in this study significantly reduced the manufacturing and installation costs. Therefore, it is expected that the proposed jacket will contribute to reducing construction expenses for new wind power farms and invigorating wind power farm businesses.