Challenges in Simulation of Aerodynamics, Hydrodynamics, and Mooring-Line Dynamics of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

This paper presents the current major modeling challenges for floating offshore wind turbine design tools. It also describes aerodynamic and hydrodynamic effects due to rotor and platform motions and usage of non-slender support structures. The applicability of advanced potential flow and computational fluid dynamics-based aerodynamic and hydrodynamic simulation methods to represent these effects-exceeding state-of-the-art design tool capabilities-is analyzed and the results are presented. Different techniques for the representation of mooring-line dynamics, including quasi-static, finite element, and multibody methods, and their impact on global system loads are investigated. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of the relevant effects, strengths and weaknesses of the different methods are discussed, and development needs of future tools are described.