Effect of Wind Turbine on TLP Floating Platform Responses

Abstract

Ever increasing population of India demands high production of electrical energy which puts immense pressure on our limited stock of non-renewable sources of energy and makes us dependent over imports from foreign countries. The present study focuses on the innovative concept of renewable offshore wind energy wherein the hydrodynamic analysis of Tension Leg Platform (TLP) Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) which supports 5MW wind turbine tower is carried out using 'ANSYS Workbench 14.5'. The six degree responses of the structure are obtained in operational conditions considering rated wind velocity of 11.4m/s in an irregular wave environment. Two cases are mainly considered, the first-one with incident wave and wind combined action along 0 0 (case 1) and the second-one with incident wave and wind combined action along 45 0 (case 2). The effect of wind turbine on TLP responses is compared in between 10 different geometric models; 5 models (A', B', C', D', E') considering only the TLP platform and 5 models (A, B, C, D, E) considering the same platforms along with wind turbine tower. It is observed that TLP FOWT has higher translational motions (surge, sway, and heave) as compared to rotational motions (roll, pitch, and yaw). The metacentric height improves drastically after adding weight to concrete ballast. Higher reserve buoyancy helps reduce surge, sway, roll and yaw. The direction of the incident wave and wind does not affect heave response and remains same when incident wave and wind acts at 0 0 or 45 0. Higher reserve buoyancy increases pitch response only when incident wave and wind is acting at 0 0 but the reverse effect is observed when incident wave and wind is acting at 45 0 .