A Comprehensive Aero-Hydro-Structural Analysis of a 5-MW Offshore Wind Turbine System: Towards Cost-Effective Deployment of Offshore Wind Turbines in Maryland

Abstract

To facilitate the deployment of offshore wind turbines in Maryland wind energy area, a comprehensive aero-hydro-structural analysis is conducted for a 5-MW offshore wind turbine system. The soil-foundation interaction under complex aero-hydro loading is analyzed to provide a suitable foundation design with a high safety factor and minimal cost per unit energy. Considering the wind turbine size and hydrological characteristics, the mono-pile foundation design is selected for current study. Both the aerodynamic loading for the 5-MW wind turbine rotor defined by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the hydrodynamic loading on the foundations are simulated under different flow conditions using high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The structural analyses are then carried out to estimate the safety factor of the foundation and the soil stress. Results from the synergistic analyses indicate that the current foundation design can effectively resist the aero-hydro loading. The same analysis strategy can be directly applied to other types of foundation designs.