Design Drivers for Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Support Structures Available to Purchase

For the purposes of offshore wind turbine support structure design it is important to understand the relative importance of the various external conditions applied to the structure in the design process. This paper presents results from integrated load calculations performed for an offshore wind turbine on a jacket support structure subject to combined wind and wave loading. A sensitivity analysis is performed on a number of design load case parameters for both fatigue and extreme conditions. Damage equivalent loads and ULS loads are derived using the GH Bladed software tool at a number of key locations on the jacket. Conclusions are drawn regarding the influence of these parameters from comparisons with the baseline load set.