Wind/Wave Misalignment in the Loads Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

The work summarized in this paper supports the development of best practices and simulation requirements in the loads analysis of floating offshore wind turbines by examining the impact of wind/wave misalignment on the system loads under normal operation. Simulations of the OC3-Hywind floating offshore wind turbine system under a wide range of wind speeds, significant wave heights, peak-spectral periods and wind/wave misalignments have been carried out with the aero-servo-hydro-elastic tool FAST. The extreme and fatigue loads have been calculated for all the simulations. The extreme and fatigue loading as a function of wind/wave misalignment have been represented as load roses and a directional binning sensitivity study has been carried out. This study focused on identifying the number and type of wind/wave misalignment simulations needed to accurately capture the extreme and fatigue loads of the system in all possible metocean conditions considered, and for a down-selected set identified as the generic US East Coast site.