• Wind and Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.525-541
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• 2016

An offshore wind turbine supported by a spar buoy floating platform is the subject of this study on tower and rotor extreme loads. The platform, with a 120-meter draft and assumed to be sited in 320 meters of water, supports a 5 MW wind turbine. A baseline model for this turbine developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is employed in stochastic response simulations. The support platform, along with the mooring system consisting of three catenary lines, chosen for loads modeling, is based on the "Hywind" floating wind turbine concept. Our interest lies in gaining an understanding of the dynamic coupling between the support platform motion and the turbine loads. We first investigate short-term response statistics using stochastic simulation for a range of different environmental wind and wave conditions. From this study, we identify a few "controlling" environmental conditions for which long-term turbine load statistics and probability distributions are established.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.363-373
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• 2022

As a key reinforcement connection between a tower and a substructure in offshore wind turbine system, the transition piece is inevitably subjected to cyclic dynamic environmental loads such as wind, current and wave. Therefore, well designed transition piece with high strength and good fatigue resistance is of great significance to the structural safety and reliability of offshore wind power systems. In this study, the structural behavior of the transition piece was studied by an extensive sets of finite element analyses. Three widely used types of transition piece were considered. The characteristics of stress development, fatigue life and weight depending on the type of the transition piece were investigated in the ultimate limit state (ULS) and the fatigue limit state (FLS) of a 5-MW offshore wind turbine to be placed in Korea. An optimal form of the transition piece was proposed based on this parametric study.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.412-419
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• 2012

The ingot-breakdown scheme of a tower flange material (low-alloy steel) for offshore wind turbine was investigated using finite element (FE) simulations and experimental analyses. Based on compression test results of the low-alloy steel, a deformation processing map was generated using the superposition approach between the dynamic materials model (DMM) and Ziegler's instability criterion. The deformation processing map allowed determination of the optimum process conditions for the tower flange material. Within the FE simulations of the ingot breakdown process, the Cockcroft-Latham criterion, which considers ductile fracture, was used to predict the possibility of forming defects during the hot working process. In general, the critical value for the ductile fracture of steel is 0.74. During the ingot-breakdown under optimum process conditions, the actual tower flange forgings exhibited a relatively uniform shape without any forming defects.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.435-449
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• 2020

To effectively extract the vast wind resource, offshore wind turbines are designed with large rotor and slender tower, which makes them vulnerable to external vibration sources such as wind and wave loads. Substantial research efforts have been devoted to mitigate the unwanted vibrations of offshore wind turbines to ensure their serviceability and safety in the normal working condition. However, most previous studies investigated the vibration control of wind turbines in one direction only, i.e., either the out-of-plane or in-plane direction. In reality, wind turbines inevitably vibrate in both directions when they are subjected to the external excitations. The studies on both the in-plane and out-of-plane vibration control of wind turbines are, however, scarce. In the present study, the NREL 5 MW wind turbine is taken as an example, a detailed three-dimensional (3D) Finite Element (FE) model of the wind turbine is developed in ABAQUS. To simultaneously control the in-plane and out-of-plane vibrations induced by the combined wind and wave loads, another carefully designed (i.e., tuned) spring and dashpot are added to the perpendicular direction of each Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) system that is used to control the vibrations of the tower and blades in one particular direction. With this simple modification, a bi-directional TMD system is formed and the vibrations in both the out-of-plane and in-plane directions are simultaneously suppressed. To examine the control effectiveness, the responses of the wind turbine without control, with separate TMD system and the proposed bi-directional TMD system are calculated and compared. Numerical results show that the bi-directional TMD system can simultaneously control the out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations of the wind turbine without changing too much of the conventional design of the control system. The bi-directional control system therefore could be a cost-effective solution to mitigate the bi-directional vibrations of offshore wind turbines.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.434-438
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is that investigates the Natural Frequency behavior characteristic of Wind Turbine Jacket Type Tower model, and calculated that the stress values of Thrust Load, Wave Load, Wind Load, Current Loda, Gravity Load, etc., environment evaluation analysis during static Operating Wind Turbine Jacket Type Tower model, carried out of Natural Frequency analysis of total load case to stress matrix, Frequency calculated that calculated Add Natural Frequency to stiffness matrix for determinant to stress results. The finite element analysis is performed with commercial F.E.M program (ANSYS) on the basis of the natural frequency and mode shape.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.17 no.2 s.119
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• pp.130-135
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is that investigates the Natural Frequency behavior characteristic of wind turbine jacket type tower model, and calculated that the stress values of thrust load, wave load, wind load, current loda, gravity load, etc., environment evaluation analysis during static operating wind turbine jacket type tower model, carried out of natural frequency analysis of total load case to stress matrix, frequency calculated that calculated add natural frequency to stiffness matrix for determinant to stress results. The finite element analysis is performed with commercial F.E.M program (ANSYS) on the basis of the natural frequency and mode shape.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.455-463
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• 2012

In this study, we calculate dynamic constrained force of tower top and blade root of a floating offshore wind turbine. The floating offshore wind turbine is multibody system which consists of a floating platform, a tower, a nacelle, and a hub and three blades. All of these parts are regarded as a rigid body with six degree-of-freedom(DOF). The platform and the tower are connected with fixed joint, and the tower, the nacelle, and the hub are successively connected with revolute joint. The hub and three blades are connected with fixed joint. The recursive formulation is adopted for constructing the equations of motion for the floating wind turbine. The non-linear hydrostatic force, the linear hydrodynamic force, the aerodynamic force, the mooring force, and gravitational forces are considered as external forces. The dynamic load at the tower top, rotor shaft, and blade root of the floating wind turbine are simulated in time domain by solving the equations of motion numerically. From the simulation results, the mutual effects of the dynamic response between the each part of the floating wind turbine are discussed and can be used as input data for the structural analysis of the floating offshore wind turbine.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2018

Due to integrated stochastic wind and wave loads, the supporting platform of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) has to bear six Degrees of Freedom (DOF) motion, which makes the random cyclic loads acting on the structural components, for instance the tower base, more complicated than those on bottom-fixed or land-based wind turbines. These cyclic loads may cause unexpected fatigue damages on a FOWT. This paper presents a study on short-term fatigue damage at the tower base of a 5 MW FOWT with a spar-type platform. Fully coupled time-domain simulations code FAST is used and realistic environment conditions are considered to obtain the loads and structural stresses at the tower base. Then the cumulative fatigue damage is calculated based on rainflow counting method and Miner's rule. Moreover, the effects of the simulation length, the wind-wave misalignment, the wind-only condition and the wave-only condition on the fatigue damage are investigated. It is found that the wind and wave induced loads affect the tower base's axial stress separately and in a decoupled way, and the wave-induced fatigue damage is greater than that induced by the wind loads. Under the environment conditions with rated wind speed, the tower base experiences the highest fatigue damage when the joint probability of the wind and wave is included in the calculation. Moreover, it is also found that 1 h simulation length is sufficient to give an appropriate fatigue damage estimated life for FOWT.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.241-244
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• 2006

Recently wind turbines become large, constructed as farms and going out to offshore. Different design approach from onshore is needed for offshore wind turbine. At this paper concept and preliminary design of an offshore wind turbine of 3MW rated power are performed. The concept design started from modelling of the generator and gearbox. With these modelling the optimum specifications was acquired. Integrated type of drive train is designed with all parts are mounted on the tower top as the offshore maintenance strategy. At the preliminary stage control system, power production algorithm and safety system are designed. Load calculation is also performed. The 3MW offshore wind turbine concept/preliminary design and the process of design are obtained as results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.1489-1495
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• 2012

In this study, we perform the structural analysis of a floating offshore wind turbine tower by considering the dynamic response of the floating platform. A multibody system consisting of three blades, a hub, a nacelle, the platform, and the tower is used to model the floating wind turbine. The blades and the tower are modeled as flexible bodies using three-dimensional beam elements. The aerodynamic force on the blades is calculated by the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory with hub rotation. The hydrostatic, hydrodynamic, and mooring forces are considered for the platform. The structural dynamic responses of the tower are simulated by numerically solving the equations of motion. From the simulation results, the time history of the internal forces at the nodes, such as the bending moment and stress, are obtained. In conclusion, the internal forces are compared with those obtained from static analysis to assess the effects of wave loads on the structural stability of the tower.