Effects of wind load on hydrodynamic performance of an offshore wind turbine semi-submersible platform.

With the wind turbine become larger due to technology development, the effects of wind load on the dynamic behaviors of wind turbine system play a more important pole, especially for offshore wind turbine system with floating platform. To research such effects, the dynamic behaviors of a new semi-submersible platform of a 10 MW wind turbine in 300 m deep seawater are studied in this study. Firstly, frequency domain analysis is done to show the performances of the semi-submersible platform and prepare hydrodynamic coefficients for time domain analysis. Then time domain analysis is studied with the consideration of the coupled load effects of the wind turbine floating platform, mooring lines and ocean environment. Main load components on the wind turbine floating platform are disposed, and the effects of wind load are studied as a key point. Though the result shows that wave load still dominates the contribution to motions of rolling, heaving and surging, the contribution of wind load becomes more important than current load in the operation case, which is different of traditional floating platform.