• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.501-508
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• 2021

The turbine industry demands a reliable design with affordable cost. As technological advances begin to support turbines of huge sizes, and the increasing importance of wind turbines from day to day make design safety conditions more important. Wind turbines are exposed to environmental conditions that can affect their installation, durability, and operation. International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61400-1 design load cases consist of analyses involving wind turbine operating conditions. This design load cases (DLC) is important for determining fatigue loads (i.e., forces and moments) that occur as a result of expected conditions throughout the life of the machine. With the help of FAST (Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence), an open source software, the NREL 5MW land base wind turbine model was used. IEC 61400-1 wind turbine design standard procedures assessed turbine behavior and fatigue damage to the tower base of dynamic loads in different design conditions. Real characteristic wind speed distribution and multi-directional effect specific to the site were taken into consideration. The effect of these conditions on the economic service life of the turbine has been studied.

• 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.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.609-623
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• 2015

Seismic reliability analysis of a jacket-type support structure for an offshore wind turbine was performed. When defining the limit state function by using the dynamic response of the support structure, a number of dynamic calculations must be performed in a First-Order Reliability Method (FORM). That means analysis costs become too high. In this paper, a new reliability analysis approach using a static response is used. The dynamic effect of the response is considered by introducing a new parameter called the Peak Response Factor (PRF). The probability distribution of PRF can be estimated by using the peak value in the dynamic response. The probability distribution of the PRF was obtained by analyzing dynamic responses during a set of ground motions. A numerical example is presented to compare the proposed approach with the conventional static response-based approach.

• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.16-23
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• 2018

A damage detection method for the tripod support structure of offshore wind turbines is presented for structural health monitoring. A finite element model of a prototype tripod support structure is established and the modal properties are calculated. The degree and location of the damage are estimated based on the neural network technique using the changes of natural frequencies and mode shape due to the damage. The stress distribution occurring in the support structure is obtained by a dynamic analysis for the wind turbine system to select the output data of the neural network. The natural frequencies and mode shapes for 36 possible damage scenarios were used for the input data of the learned neural network for damage assessment. The estimated damages agreed reasonably well with the accurate ones. The presented method could be effectively applied for damage detection and structural health monitoring of various types of support structures of offshore wind turbines.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.524-530
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• 2020

The risk of offshore wind turbine support structures by scour has been proposed. The proposed utilize probabilities of scour depths and fragilities according to scour depth and a modification of a seismic risk analysis method. The probability distribution of scour depth was calculated using a equation which is suitable to consider marine environmental conditions such as significant wave height, significant period, and current velocity, and dynamic analysis was performed on an offshore wind turbine equipped with an suction bucket to find fragility. Then, the risk of offshore wind turbine support structure considering scour can be found by integrating the scour probability and the fragility.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.466-472
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• 2009

Offshore wind energy is gaining more and more attention during this decade. For the countries with coast sites, the water depth is significantly large. This causes attention to the floating wind turbine. Offshore wind turbines are designed and analyzed using comprehensive simulation codes that account for the coupled dynamics of the wind inflow, aerodynamics, elasticity and controls of the wind turbine, along with the incident waves, sea current, hydrodynamics, and foundation dynamics of the support structures. In this work, a three-bladed 5MW upwind wind turbine installed on a floating spar buoy in 320m of water is studied by using of fully coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulation tool. Specifications of the structures are chosen from the OC3 (Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration) under "IEA Wind Annex XXIII-subtask2". The primary external conditions due to wind and waves are simulated. Certain design load case is investigated.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.78-87
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• 2014

Recently the offshore wind turbine development is requested to be installed off south-west coast and Jeju island in Korea. Reliable and robust support structures are required to meet the demand on the offshore wind turbine in harsh and rapidly varying environmental conditions. Monopile is the most preferred substructure in shallow water with long term experiences from the offshore gas and oil industries. This paper presents an optimum design of a monopile connection with grouted transition piece (TP) for the reliable and cost-effective design purposes. First, design loads are simulated for a 5 MW offshore wind turbine in site conditions off the southwest coast of Korea. Second, sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the design sensitivity of geometry and material parameters of monopile connection based on the ultimate and fatigue capacities according to DNV standards. Next, optimization is conducted to minimize the total mass and resulted in 30% weight reduction and the optimum geometry and material properties of the monopile substructure of the fixed offshore wind turbine.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.39.1-39.1
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• 2011

Due to less turbulence and no land limitation, offshore wind energy gets more attention than onshore. Jacket structure is regarded as a suitable solution for the water depth ranging from 30 to 80 meters. In general, joint stress concentration of jacket support structures affects their fatigue life. Nowadays, most jacket structures for offshore wind turbines have tubular X-joint between legs. In this paper, a study on X-joint stress concentration of offshore wind turbine jacket structure is performed by using 50m water depth model. Stress of X-joint on offshore environmental conditions are discussed.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.117-134
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• 2014

It is believed that offshore wind farms may satisfy an increasing portion of the energy demand in the next years. This paper presents a comparative study of the fatigue performances of tripod and jacket steel support structures for offshore wind turbines in waters of intermediate depth (20-50 m). A reference site at a water depth of 45 m in the North Atlantic Ocean is considered. The tripod and jacket support structures are conceived according to typical current design. The fatigue behavior is assessed in the time domain under combined stochastic wind and wave loading and the results are compared in terms of a lifetime damage equivalent load.

• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.23-36
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• 2024

In this study, a health monitoring system was developed for the two most vulnerable parts of a wind tower support structure: the connection between steel towers (L-Flange) and the concrete foundation-steel tower connection. To select assessment parameters for health monitoring, detailed FEM analysis was conducted using the ABAQUS program. Additionally, a testbed was established near the Jeju Woljeongri wind turbine farm to evaluate the applicability of measurement data by installing sensors. Through computational analysis and relevant criteria review, we defined limits for measurement parameters by vulnerable section. We categorized the structural safety evaluation into four stages: normal, caution, warning, and danger, and selected management criteria for each stage. From this, an algorithm to evaluate safety was developed, and a visualized monitoring platform based on the established critical parts monitoring system was developed.