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Offshore wind turbines are designed and analyzed using comprehensive simulation tools (or codes) that account for the coupled dynamics of the wind inflow, aerodynamics, elasticity, and controls of the turbine, along with the incident waves, sea current, hydrodynamics, mooring dynamics, and foundation dynamics of the support structure. This paper describes the latest findings of the code-to-code verification activities of the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation project, which operates under the International Energy Agency Wind Task 30. In the latest phase of the project, participants used an assortment of simulation codes to model the coupled dynamic response of a 5-MW wind turbine installed on a floating semisubmersible in 200 m of water. Code predictions were compared from load case simulations selected to test different model features. The comparisons have resulted in a greater understanding of offshore floating wind turbine dynamics and modeling techniques, and better knowledge of the validity of various approximations. The lessons learned from this exercise have improved the participants’ codes, thus improving the standard of offshore wind turbine modeling.

Phase I of the OC6 project is focused on examining why offshore wind design tools underpredict the response (loads/motion) of the OC5-DeepCwind semisubmersible at its surge and pitch natural frequencies. Previous investigations showed that the underprediction was primarily related to nonlinear hydrodynamic loading, so two new validation campaigns were performed to separately examine the different hydrodynamic load components. In this paper, we validate a variety of tools against this new test data, focusing on the ability to accurately model the low-frequency loads on a semisubmersible floater when held fixed under wave excitation and when forced to oscillate in the surge direction. However, it is observed that models providing better load predictions in these two scenarios do not necessarily produce a more accurate motion response in a moored configuration.

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