Fully Coupled Aero-hydrodynamic Analysis of a Semi-submersible Floating Offshore Wind Turbine
Traditional hydrodynamic software and other numerical analysis codes can not fully consider the blade aerodynamic load distribution,vortex wake structure and wind-wave coupling effect.Thus,a fully coupled aero-hydro-mooring dynamic method is established through the dynamic flow interaction model in STAR-CCM+with superposition motion and catenary mooring solver to develop a more reliable numerical model of floating offshore wind turbines.The reliability of the proposed coupling model is verified by analyzing the free decay tests of the platform,the 6 degrees of freedom responses and the rotor aerodynamic performance.Three-dimensional visual flow field analysis shows that the floating wind turbine generates 6 degrees of freedom motion under wave excitation.The shedding vortices from blades and vortex tubes interact with the wake vortices,further increasing the complexity of the flow field.The results provide a theoretical reference for the flow field optimization and design of floating offshore wind turbines.