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Accurate estimation of the dynamic behavior of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) under typhoon environment is essential to design and install FOWTs in a prone area of typhoons such as around Japan. Up to now, extensive efforts for development of design tools for FOWTs have been made, and nowadays several design tools are available. Needless to say, it is of utmost importance that the engineering design tools have been verified and validated for the real physical phenomena before being applied to real designs/projects with confidence. Much efforts have thus been made as code-to-code comparisons and by validations using model test data. Validations of the design tools using full-scale field data for FOWTs have also been made, but available open literatures are quite limited, particularly for design-driving extreme cases. In this paper, we describe the analysis of the dynamic response of a 2-MW spar-type FOWT at the time of typhoon attack in the actual sea area. The central atmospheric pressure of the typhoon at the closest time was 965 hPa, the maximum instantaneous wind speed at the hub height was 52.2 m/s, and the maximum significant wave height was 6.9 m. The dynamic responses under the typhoon environment are numerically simulated by using the time-series records of the wind speed, the wind direction, the wave height, the wave direction, the current speed, and the current direction which were acquired during the typhoon passing through close to the FOWT. Then the simulated motion responses are compared with the measured motion responses for the same durations. By the comparisons, the numerical simulation tool which was used for the design of the FOWT has been partially validated. It has also been confirmed that the spatial coherence of the wind speed has a significant effect for the platform motions, particularly for yaw motion. • Dynamic response of a spar-type floating wind turbine during typhoon attack is presented here. • In-site measured values are compared with numerical simulations. • Basically, good agreement is observed except for yaw motion. • The spatial coherence of the wind speeds has a significant effect for the platform motions, particularly for yaw motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) has been progressing steadily. To utilize the moderate water depth of 50–100 m ocean space around Japan, a barge-type FOWT was installed in Kitakyushu as part of a demonstration project conducted by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan. The FOWT mounts a 3 MW two-bladed wind turbine with blade diameter of 100 m and hub height of 72 m. The barge-type floating support structure is equipped with a moonpool in the center and a skirt at its bottom and is moored with 9 lines of catenary chains. To investigate the dynamic behavior of the barge-type FOWT in extreme condition and the validity of the numerical simulation in modeling the effect of the complex flow around the floating structure to the FOWT's motion response, the FOWT's motion data during typhoon Tapah on 23 September 2019 were measured and compared with the simulation results. As the results, the simulation results showed a good agreement in general to the measurement data. However, some shifts in the peak frequency of the simulation's motion spectrum and a disagreement in waves with shorter wave periods were also observed. The possible causes of these differences are discussed thoroughly in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have been installed in Europe and Japan with relatively modern technology. The installation of floating wind farms in deep water is recommended because the wind speed is stronger and more stable. The design of the FOWT must ensure it is able to withstand complex environmental conditions including wind, wave, current, and performance of the wind turbine. It needs simulation tools with fully integrated hydrodynamic-servo-elastic modeling capabilities for the floating offshore wind turbines. Most of the numerical simulation approaches consider only first-order hydrodynamic loads; however, the second-order hydrodynamic loads have an effect on a floating platform which is moored by a catenary mooring system. At the difference-frequencies of the incident wave components, the drift motion of a FOWT system is able to have large oscillation around its natural frequency. This paper presents the effects of second-order wave loads to the drift motion of a semi-submersible type. This work also aimed to validate the hydrodynamic model of Ulsan University (UOU) in-house codes through numerical simulations and model tests. The NREL FAST code was used for the fully coupled simulation, and in-house codes of UOU generates hydrodynamic coefficients as the input for the FAST code. The model test was performed in the water tank of UOU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]