A novel structural form of semi-submersible platform for a floating offshore wind turbine with hydrodynamic performance analysis

With the mature of floating offshore wind turbine technology, floating wind farm building in the deep sea becomes an inevitable trend. In the design of floating offshore wind turbine, the change of structural form is the main factor influencing hydrodynamic performance. This research, taking a typical sea condition in China's coastal areas as the object of study, designs a novel semi-submersible foundation for NREL 5 MW offshore wind turbine in 200 m deep water. In the design, deep-draft buoys structures are used to reduce the force of waves on the floating offshore, while damping structures are used to optimize the stability of wind turbine and reduce the heave amplitude. By means of numerical simulation method, the hydrodynamic performance of semi-submersible support is studied. Meanwhile, the response amplitude operators (RAOs) and the wave response motions of platform are calculated. The results in time domain indicate that the floating wind turbine system can keep safe and survive in the harsh sea condition, coupling wind, waves and currents. It is showed that the designed semi-submersible support of platform has excellent hydrodynamic performance. This change of structural form may serve as a reference on the development of offshore wind floating platform.