Umbilical Fatigue Analysis for a Wave Energy Converter: Paper No. OMAE2020-18879

Billy Ballard, Yi-Hsiang Yu, Jennifer van Rij, Frederick Driscoll

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

6 Scopus Citations

Abstract

Unique umbilical designs for wave energy converters (WECs), including the ability to handle significantly larger motions and loads over long deployments, are often required when conventional marine umbilical designs for offshore oil and gas and offshore wind may not meet the design and cost needs of wave energy technologies. This study details a fatigue analysis of a dynamic power umbilical attached to a two-body floating point absorber WEC system, using the sea states provided for the PacWave testing facilities. The 6 degrees of freedom motion time history for the WEC was simulated, and the motions of the attachment point for the umbilical on the WEC and respective sea states were used to analyze the dynamic motions and fatigue of the connected power umbilical to predict the fatigue life. The results show that the fatigue damage observed is more significant in shallow water, and extensive fatigue damage may occur because of the larger curvature response of the umbilical. The umbilical configurations departing at 90 deg off incoming waves were found to have the highest fatigue life attributed to less extension or compression of the umbilical. However, additional bend stiffener/limiter features may need to be incorporated into the buoyancy section and touchdown regions to minimize curvature-induced fatigue.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages7
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
EventASME 2020 39th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering -
Duration: 3 Aug 20207 Aug 2020

Conference

ConferenceASME 2020 39th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering
Period3/08/207/08/20

Bibliographical note

See NREL/CP-5000-76015 for preprint

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5700-79087

Keywords

  • fatigue analysis
  • umbilical
  • wave energy
  • wave energy converter

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