Numerical Modeling of Neutrally-Stable and Sustainable Atmospheric Boundary Layer for the Wind Load Estimation on an Offshore Platform

This paper summarizes a joint effort among operators, class societies, research institutes, shipyards, and engineering companies to verify a common modeling practice to generate a sustainable wind profile in CFD simulations for wind tunnel tests. The same numerical guideline is applied to various CFD software commonly used in the offshore industry. This is part of the effort from the CFD Task Force under the SNAME OC-8 Panel, “Guidance on Wind Technologies.” The verification results show that the sustainable wind profile can be generated within 1% tolerance from the target wind profile, for all five CFD software participated. The uncertainties in the wind load are also contained within 4% for the semisubmersible hull tested in this study with a traditional turbulence model and the 1%-tolerance wind profile, regardless of the CFD software.