[CCoE Notice] Thesis Defense: Aeroelastic and Hydrodynamic Loads and Structural Dynamics of Large MW-Scale Offshore Wind Turbines in Shallow-Water GOM

[Grayson, Audrey A]

PhD DEFENSE: Ling Ling Yin
DATE: July 17, 2015
TIME: 3:00 PM
PLACE: Large Conference Room, Bld3, ERP
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Su Su Wang (Chair), Dr. Ralph W Metcalfe,
Dr. Kaspar J Willam, Dr. King Him Lo, Dr. Di Yang


AEROELASTIC AND HYDRODYNAMIC LOADS AND STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS OF LARGE MW-SCALE OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES IN SHALLOW-WATER GOM

Abstract
Offshore wind energy production has been expanding rapidly worldwide in the past decade owing to vast wind resources offshore. Increasingly large MW-scale wind turbines are used to improve their costs and efficiency. While in regardless of the high potential in offshore wind resources, offshore wind turbines are not currently in use to generate electricity in any U.S. water. In the study, an investigation is conducted on the feasibility of using a large 13.2-MW wind turbine with a fixed-bottom mono-tower support structure in U.S. hurricane-prone western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) shallow water, with focus on the modeling and structural dynamics of the offshore wind turbine (OWT).
The offshore wind turbine site and metocean conditions are specified first with particular interest in extreme condition in the GOM shallow water. A mono-tower support structure is properly sized for the 13.2-MW wind turbine to sustain a 100-year return hurricane in the site, with which the entire offshore wind turbine is constructed in several established computational mechanics tools.
Wind, wave and current loads on, and dynamic response of the 13.2-MW OWT in normal operation and in the 100-year return hurricane are evaluated.  Resonance issue owing to the interaction of the wind turbine components and excitation from environment is clarified.  Mono-pile lengths of the 13.2-MW OWT mono-tower support structure in different types of soil are properly sized to investigate the effects of pile-soil interaction on the tower and rotor structural dynamics as well as rotor performance.
In addition, the sizing method is extended to scale tower structures for other large OWTs with power ratings up to 20 MW. The results indicate that it may be feasible to operate large MW-scale offshore wind turbines in stiff soils in U.S. hurricane-prone western Gulf of Mexico shallow water.
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