BOW project received funding
The project Large Offshore Wind Turbines (LOWT): Structural design accounting for non-neutral wind conditions is funded with 12 MNOK via the NFR FRIPRO program.
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The project has a total volume of 14MNOK and and is coordinated by UiS, with UiB, SINTEF Energy and SINTEF industry as partners.
LOWT will develop new knowledge and models to improve the design basis for large floating wind turbines (>12MW) in freewind and wake conditions. Observations from Hywind Scotland have shown that the thermal stratification of the atmosphere can substantially affect the structural response of a wind turbine to the incoming turbulent flow.
The first objective is to use wind data from several offshore sites to characterize the wind field in non-neutral atmospheric conditions. The project will use high-frequency wind data combined with a brand new remote sensing dataset (COTUR). In the COTUR campaign, the incoming flow over the ocean was recorded, both within and above the surface layer, thus providing new insight on the applicability surface-layer scaling to model the turbulent wind loads on LOWT. This unique dataset will be analyzed for the first time to indicate whether the turbulence models used in the standards, which mainly relies on surface-layer scaling are appropriate or not. The final output will be to recommend a suitable wind and coherence model for in non-neutral conditions as input to free wind aero-elastic simulations and DWM models offshore.
The second objective is to validate the simulated wind turbine response using full scale data from offshore wind farms (Alpha Ventus, Sheringham Shoal, and Zefyros/Hywind Demo). The validated simulation tools will then be used to quantify the effect of non-neutral atmospheric conditions on future LOWT (>12MW) to ensure safe and cost-effective design in the next generation of offshore wind farms in Norway and beyond.
The final focus of the project is wake simulations of LOWT in non-neutral conditions using DWM model. High-fidelity CFD simulations will be used to include variable velocity shear in the DWM method and validate the wake meandering in non-neutral conditions. The non-neutral wind spectra and coherence from the data analysis work will be used as input for the DWM simulations.
Contact: joachim.reuder@uib.no