Fluid-structure Interaction of Offshore Wind Turbines
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Offshore wind turbines operate in harsh marine environments that combine wind, wave, and currents. These determine the loadings on the whole structure, from the jacket or monopile for bottom fixed turbines or floaters for floating turbines, to the support tower and rotating blades. Our research presents a fully integrated framework to capture the fluid-structure interaction of bottom-fixed wind turbines mounted on jacket foundations, considering fully turbulent wind conditions and regular and irregular waves. Our approach combines DOFAS, an in-house large-eddy simulation solver that captures stratified atmospheric flow conditions [1,2], with a structural mechanics solver that captures stresses and deformations of the turbine and jacket [3,4]. We applied this novel framework to a set of benchmark cases for an NREL 5 MW turbine on an OC4 jacket foundation for a range of metocean conditions. Results for accelerations and displacements at the rotor will be provided, as will stresses at the bottom of the tower and the jacket. We will compare the system's response under different onset conditions to better represent realistic ambient conditions.