Coupling of Two Tools for the Simulation of Floating Wind Turbines

For the design of a floating wind turbine it is necessary to take the loading due to the wind, wave and current in equal consideration. The PHATAS computer program from ECN (Energy research Centre of the Netherlands) is a time-domain aero-elastic simulation program, that accounts for the complete mutual interaction of unsteady rotor aerodynamics, structural dynamics of the rotor blades and tower, and interaction with the turbine controller under influence of turbulent wind and wave loading for fixed wind turbines. The aNySIM computer program from MARIN is a multi rigid body time domain model that accounts for wave loadings, current loadings, wind loadings, floating body dynamics, mooring dynamics. The coupled computer program aNySIM / PHATAS accounts for all loadings acting on a floating wind turbine and its response whereas PHATAS can only be used for fixed wind turbines onshore and offshore. This paper reports on the dynamic coupling between PHATAS and aNySIM. As a typical case study, the controller for floating offshore wind turbines is evaluated. This new tool has been used to repeat phase IV of the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration (OC3) within IEA Wind Task 23, regarding floating wind turbine modelling. The results of these simulations are presented in this paper.