COUPLED DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF A SPAR TYPE FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND TURBINE

FOWTs (Floating Offshore Wind Turbine) are feasible renewable devices to harness the wind energy in the near future. However, because of the complicated interactions among wind turbine, mooring system and the hull, the motion of a FOWT under the impact of severe wind, wave and current has not been well studied yet. This research focuses on the coupled numerical analysis of a FOWT. A numerical code COUPLE-FAST is developed by integrating two existing codes, namely, COUPLE and FAST, to carry out the task. In this study, a particular FOWT model is chosen for the numerical simulation, which consists of a NREL 5-MW baseline wind turbine and OC3-Hywind Spar. Although the numerical simulation is limited to this particular type of FOWTs, the results and related code (COUPLE-FAST) may be helpful to the design of FOWTs in the future.