Current Research | Offshore Engineering

A CFD investigation of the hydrodynamic response of focused wave impact on a floating platform for floating offshore wind turbine

By Yang Zhou, Dr Qing Xiao

The recent study has been focused on the hydrodynamic responses of the OC4 DeepCwind semi-submersible platform under focused waves(presented in OMAE2019, paper number OMAE2019-96043). The dynamic responses of the platform are numerically simulated under various focused wave parameters. Compared to regular waves, the occurrence of wave overtopping and the rather large wave run-up at starboard column is the significant difference between two types of waves.

The results are compared with those obtained from an in-house potential flow theory tool at Électricité de France (EDF). It is found that the predicted CFD surge motion responses are close to those achieved with the second order potential theory while differ from the results obtained using linear potential theory. As to the pitch motion, differences are observed between two results, mainly to the different methods used for high order loads and viscous effects calculation. The strong nonlinearity of the entire FOWT system at large waves will be the interests of our near future studies.