Simulation and Optimization in Offshore Wind Turbine Structural Analysis
Abstract
The public interest in renewable energy resources is continuously growing as issues
of pollution and shortage of limited resources as coal or oil become evident. One
promising technical solution for the extraction of renewable energy is to install
wind turbines offshore. Stronger and more steady winds as well as the reduced
need for land area are substantial advantages compared to onshore wind turbine
installations. However, higher costs for offshore installations as well as operation and
maintenance issues are by today limiting factors of offshore developments. Therefore,
cost reductions in this field are strongly needed in the future.
Investigations in this thesis were focused on simulation and optimization aspects
in offshore wind turbine structural analysis. The aim of the work was firstly to
contribute to a better understanding of complex time-domain simulations in the
research community, and secondly to give insight to several optimization approaches
which can be applied to offshore wind turbine structures. Both objectives target at
the simplification of simulation tasks, resulting in shorter analysis times and more
efficiently designed structures. Analyses performed in this thesis are presented for
the example of lattice type sub-structures.
In terms of simulation aspects, a large simulation study was performed to
determine the influence of input loading variability to structural responses. The
variability was found to be an important source of simulation error as both ultimate
and fatigue loads might be estimated with an error of up to 34% and 12%, respectively,
when following a simulation setup recommended by international standards. Another
aspect in the simulation setup is the number of load cases to be simulated. An
approach using statistical regression methods was proposed to estimate the total
fatigue damage for a set of load cases, by simulating only a few of them. Interestingly,
the number of load cases could be reduced from 21 to 3, by still providing a high
accuracy with maximum error of 6%.
Using the definition of structural weight as the main cost criteria, several optimization
studies were performed on different lattice type sub-structures. In total three approaches were developed and/or applied: a local optimization approach,
the simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation, and the genetic algorithm.
One result was the identification of fatigue damage as the design driver, another the
distribution of loads, resulting in varying member dimensions over the tower height.
The local optimization approach was identified as fast and efficient. Stochastic
approaches were in comparison more time demanding, but showed some interesting
solutions which a human designer would not consider so quickly.
Has parts
Paper 1: Zwick, Daniel; Muskulus, Michael. The simulation error caused by input loading variability in offshore wind turbine structural analysis. Wind Energy 2015 ;Volum 18.(8) s. 1421-1432, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/we.1767 Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Paper 2: Zwick D, Muskulus M. Simplified fatigue load assessment in offshore wind turbine structural analysis. Wind Energy 2015; http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/we.1831 Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Paper 3: Zwick, Daniel; Schafhirt, Sebastian; Brommundt, Matthias; Muskulus, Michael; Narasimhan, S; Mechineau, Jonathan; Haugsøen, Per. Comparison of different approaches to load calculation for the OWEC Quattropod jacket support structure. Journal of Physics, Conference Series 2014 ;Volum 555.(1), http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/555/1/012110 Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence
Paper 4: Zwick, Daniel; Muskulus, Michael; Moe, Geir. Iterative optimization approach for the design of full-height lattice towers for offshore wind turbines. Energy Procedia 2012 ;Volum 24. s. 297-304, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2012.06.112 Content from this work may be used Under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Paper 5: Zwick D, Muskulus M. Two-stage local optimization of lattice type support structures for offshore wind turbines
Paper 6: Molde, Håvard; Zwick, Daniel; Muskulus, Michael. Simulation-based optimization of lattice support structures for offshore wind energy converters with the simultaneous perturbation algorithm. Journal of Physics, Conference Series 2014 ;Volum 555 Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/555/1/012075
Paper 7: Pasamontes, Lucia Barcena; Torres, Fernando Gomez; Zwick, Daniel; Schafhirt, Sebastian; Muskulus, Michael. Support structure optimization for offshore wind turbines with a genetic algorithm. I: 33rd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering Volume 9B: Ocean Renewable Energy. ASME Press 2014, Is not included due to copyright available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/OMAE2014-24252