Study on Gyroscopic Effect of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

Compared with bottom-fixed wind turbines, the supporting platform of a floating offshore wind turbine has a larger range of motion, so the gyroscopic effects of the system will be more obvious. In this paper, the mathematical analytic expression of the gyroscopic moment of a floating offshore wind turbine is derived firstly. Then, FAST software is utilized to perform a numerical analysis on the model of a spar-type horizontal axis floating offshore wind turbine, OC3-Hywind, so as to verify the correctness of the theoretical analytical formula and take an investigation on the characteristics of gyroscopic effect. It is found that the gyroscopic moment of the horizontal axis floating offshore wind turbine is essentially caused by the vector change of the rotating rotor, which may be due to the pitch or yaw motion of the floating platform or the yawing motion of the nacelle. When the rotor is rotating, the pitch motion of the platform mainly excites the gyroscopic moment in the rotor’s yaw direction, and the yaw motion of the platform largely excites the rotor’s gyroscopic moment in pitch direction, accordingly. The results show that the gyroscopic moment of the FOWT is roughly linearly related to the rotor’s inertia, the rotor speed, and the angular velocity of the platform motion.