A novel concept of wind turbine floater based on tension-leg technology is introduced. This floater, dedicated to support wind turbines up to 10 MW, aims at minimizing weight and operations while decreasing the level of motions at the nacelle, hence reducing the loading on the turbine and the need for maintenance. The lightness and modularity of the concept allows for use of typical construction means, flexible procurement and building. The self-installability, meaning towing on site by means of standard anchor handling vessel (AHV) with the turbine already installed, facilitates and accelerates the towing and maintenance procedures. Regarding motions, especially tilt angle and nacelle accelerations, excellent floater performance in both operational and extreme conditions, is ensured through an innovative mooring system and reduced wave loads. The latter are kept low thanks to a high transparency of the floater to wave excitation.

The development of floating offshore wind farms requires the parallel development of suitable floaters to support the wind turbines. These floaters must be economic and must also exhibit good motion characteristics to limit the accelerations and inclinations imposed on the turbines during operation. This paper reviews the required characteristics of these floaters, addressing the requirements of fabrication, turbine integration, tow to site, and offshore installation, as well as the required behavior of the floater once installed. The benefits of an integrated design approach considering all of the above is demonstrated, and consideration is given to the industrialization of the production process for large numbers of floaters for full-scale wind farms.Based upon this review of requirements, an innovative light weight structural solution incorporating tensioned mooring legs has been developed as an economic solution for the floater. The modularity of the design facilitates construction, and offshore installation can be accomplished using standard anchor handling vessel (AHV) means. The floater design exhibits low turbine inclinations and low accelerations due to a combination of its mooring arrangement and its high degree of transparency to waves, which reduces fatigue loads and maintenance issues on the turbine.The floater behavior during towing to site and in the installed condition is described, and key performance characteristics are reported based on analytical simulations and model tests results conducted at 1:40 scale.The paper seeks to clarify the key factors to be considered in developing a floater to support a wind turbine, and to propose a solution that achieves good motion characteristics whilst satisfying the economic constraints of wind farm development.

The objective of this paper is to present the design and performance of an offshore floating wind turbine support structure and associated station keeping system, for a commercial 6 MW turbine. The results reported in this paper are based on a joint desk study performed by SBM and IFPEN for the development of this new floating support structure concept. The proposed system has been extensively analyzed thanks to time domain simulation software. Time domain models incorporate the wind turbine, the station keeping system, as well as structural components of the floating foundation. The system’s behavior has been assessed for a variety of environment conditions and turbine conditions (operating, idling, fault), resulting in an extensive design load case table. In addition to the nominal system, a number of sensitivities have been investigated to test the system response to various effects: marine growth accumulation on the floating support structure, anchor position tolerance, variations of water level. Results produced during this study show the good performance of the proposed floating wind turbine support structure and components. The proposed arrangement is capable of sustaining 20 years of operation with environment conditions up to the 50-year return period. The motions of the floating support structure are beneficial for the turbine performance, with low inclinations and low nacelle accelerations. As a consequence of these floating support structure’s low motions, the floating offshore wind turbine production is only marginally lower than the production of the same turbine on a fixed offshore foundation in the same environment. Production can occur up to the 50-year joint environment conditions. The work presented in this paper formed part of a design dossier independently reviewed by a certification body to obtain an ‘Approval in Principle‘ for the development of the floating support structure. The study has shown that the floater motion characteristics allow similar turbine production levels to be achieved by a turbine on a fixed offshore foundation, providing support to move of floating offshore energy production.

A new floating foundation for multi-MW wind turbine is being developed within a collaboration between SBM Offshore and IFP Energies nouvelles. This inclined leg TLP, is made up of four immersed buoys and a bracing structure, making the floater transparent to wave excitation. The particular mooring arrangement gives the floater interesting motion properties since it creates a fixed point close to the nacelle, strongly reducing the motion at this elevation. In order to validate the concept and the simulation strategy, a model test campaign has been carried out during three weeks in 2015 at MARIN’s offshore basin. The downscaling is performed according to the Froude law of similitude to maintain the hydrodynamic loadings and behavior. The tower bending natural period, the mooring stiffness, and the turbine rotation speed are also maintained in order to reproduce the relevant structural modes and check that no unexpected phenomena occur in the system during production or parked conditions. The scale 1/50 was initially selected so that the MARIN Stock Wind Turbine (MSWT) can be used. This model wind turbine was designed by MARIN with low Reynolds blade airfoils to mimic the NREL 5 MW wind turbine, especially the thrust force. However because of mass distribution issues, the scale has to be changed from 1/50 to 1/40, at this scale only the thrust force and the rotation speed can be replicated. First, a set of calibration tests are performed in the basin and simulated with Orcaflex™ and DeepLinesWind™ for a better understanding of the system and to validate independently the various components of the numerical models. Secondly, design parked and operational cases are conducted with wind, wave and current loadings for two floater orientations and two water depths. The objective of this campaign is to validate the concept behavior as well as the simulation tools and methodologies. Hydrodynamic and structural models are very similar in both software and are checked with the calibration tests from the basin, whereas two strategies are implemented to model the aerodynamic contribution. The Simplified Coupled Simulations (SCS), performed with Orcaflex, use the aerodynamic forces recorded during the model tests to be imposed at tower top; the Fully Coupled Simulations (FCS), run with DeepLinesWind, use the aerodynamic loading computed with the BEM theory from the measured wind.