MODEL TEST DATA CORRELATIONS WITH FULLY COUPLED HULL/MOORING ANALYSIS FOR A FLOATING WIND TURBINE ON A SEMI-SUBMERSIBLE PLATFORM

The DeepCwind floating wind turbine model tests were performed at MARIN (Maritime Research Institute Netherlands) with a model set-up corresponding to a 1:50 Froude scaling. In the model tests, the wind turbine was a scaled model of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) 5MW, horizontal axis reference wind turbine supported by three different generic floating platforms: a spar, a semi-submersible and a tension-leg platform (TLP) (Ref. [1] and [2]). This paper presents validation of the MLTSIM-FAST [3] code with DeepCwind semi-submersible wind turbine model test results. In this integrated program, the turbine tower and rotor dynamics are simulated by the subroutines of FAST [4], and the hydrodynamic loads and mooring system dynamics are "simulated by the subroutines of MLTSIM. In this study, fully coupled hull/mooring dynamics and second-order difference-frequency response are included in MLTSIIVI-FAST. The analysis results are systematically compared with model test results and show good agreement.