Design and Aero-Elastic Simulation of a 5MW Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

This paper deals with the design of a 5MW floating offshore Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). The design is based on a new offshore wind turbine concept (DeepWind concept), consisting of a Darrieus rotor mounted on a spar buoy support structure, which is anchored to the sea bed with mooring lines [1]. The design is carried out in an iterative process, involving the different sub-components and addressing several conflicting constraints. The present design does not aim to be the final optimum solution for this concept. Instead, the goal is to have a baseline model, based on the present technology, which can be improved in the future with new dedicated technological solutions. The rotor uses curved blades, which are designed in order to minimize the gravitational loads and to be produced by the pultrusion process. The floating platform is a slender cylindrical structure rotating along with the rotor, whose stability is achieved by adding ballast at the bottom. The platform is connected to the mooring lines with some rigid arms, which are necessary to absorb the torque transmitted by the rotor. The aero-elastic simulations are carried out with Hawc2, a numerical solver developed at Risø-DTU. The numerical simulations take into account the fully coupled aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads on the structure, due to wind, waves and currents. The turbine is tested in operative conditions, at different sea states, selected according to the international offshore standards. The research is part of the European project DeepWind (2010–2014), which has been financed by the European Union (FP7-Future Emerging Technologies).