Offshore wind farms will play an important role in the world's energy supply in the upcoming decades. In some European countries, the development of large offshore wind farms was started, e.g. the German government expects 20-25,000 MW of wind power to be installed offshore until 2030. Now that a small number of offshore wind farms have been erected and first experience has been gained, one sees that a lot of additional tasks have to be solved, compared to onshore wind turbines as well as conventional offshore constructions. The experience of both fields cannot be directly adapted without modifications. The paper presents the necessary considerations for the determination of design loads for offshore wind turbines (OWTs) and OWT support structures. The design of OWTs strongly depends on the environmental conditions such as wind and wave data, ambient temperatures and soil conditions. Load analyses for OWTs are generally done using sophisticated simulation tools which consider the turbulent wind conditions as well as the structural dynamics and the operational behavior of the turbine. Compared to wind turbines onshore, wave loads are an additional element that needs to be considered. Experience shows that the natural frequencies of the support structure highly influence the design loads on the system due to excitation by the rotor. Therefore, the load analysis in combination with optimization of the support structure is an iterative process. A close cooperation between the designing engineers of turbine and support structure is definitely required. The calculation procedure will be presented as well as results from a sample calculation for a typical configuration.
Interaction of load analysis and structural design of offshore wind turbines
Wechselwirkung zwischen Belastungsanalyse und Baustatik von Offshore-Windturbinen
2006
10 Seiten, 16 Bilder, 5 Tabellen, 15 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
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