Aerodynamic behavior of a floating offshore wind turbine

Overview & Synopsis

The flowfield around the rotor blades of a wind turbine may be quite complex due to the occurrence of several aerodynamic phenomena. It is all the more true for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT), for which the six rigid-body motions of the floating platform can induce blade/wake interactions. Therefore conventional numerical approaches for wind turbine applications, such as BEM, may be questionable for an accurate prediction of floating wind turbine aerodynamic loads. Consequently, the current paper investigates the aerodynamic behavior of a FOWT subjected to several prescribed motions, representative of a wave movement, based on CFD simulations. These results, obtained on the NREL 5-MW wind turbine, are compared to previous results found in the literature and analyzed to provide a better understanding of the involved aerodynamic phenomena.