Reliability based design loads of an offshore semi-submersible floating wind turbine

The 1-D and 2-D environmental contour method is used in order to predict the out of plane bending moment loads at the blade root and tower base moment loads for the DeepCWind 5 MW offshore semi-submersible floating wind turbine. The joint probability distribution for the mean wind speed and wave height is considered in the study and the FAST code is used to simulate the wind conditions for various return periods. In the present study, the Environmental Contour (EC) method is used for long-term extreme response prediction, which uses inverse reliability techniques that work by searching a narrow subset of combinations of all important random variables that affect the performance of the floating wind turbine. The present study allow the estimation of joint wind and wave design loads for the wind turbine support platform.