Dynamic behavior of a tension leg platform offshore wind turbine under environmental loads

In order to evaluate the dynamic behavior of floating offshore wind turbines, the authors consider two approaches. A numerical method is used to investigate Tension Leg Platform (TLP) offshore wind turbine response behavior under a parked condition. This code considers nonlinearities due to changes in the tension of tethers. The off-diagonal components of stiffness, damping and mass matrices are considered to calculate coupling. This code solves the nonlinear equation of motion at each time step. However, in order to validate the data generated by the code, a scaled-down model was fully tested in the marine laboratory. The importance of these series of experiments is due to the fact that this model possesses a unique design and specifications to which no other model can be compared. Measurement of three degrees of freedom under environmental load is the goal of the experiments. Also, the results clearly show that the direction of encountering waves is an extremely important factor. It can be concluded that wind loads can dampen the oscillation of the model and prevent the impact of large loads on the tethers. The results show that the discrepancy between experimental and numerical results, with different degrees of freedom, is sufficiently acceptable. (C) 2014 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.