Journal of Marine Science and Application (2019) 18:82–92

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11804-019-00084-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled

Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation
Yang Huang 1 & Ping Cheng 1 & Decheng Wan 1

Accepted: 6 July 2018 / Published online: 8 April 2019

# Harbin Engineering University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
The exploration for renewable and clean energies has become crucial due to environmental issues such as global warming and the
energy crisis. In recent years, floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have attracted a considerable amount of attention as a
means to exploit steady and strong wind sources available in deep-sea areas. In this study, the coupled aero-hydrodynamic
characteristics of a spar-type 5-MW wind turbine are analyzed. An unsteady actuator line model (UALM) coupled with a two-
phase computational fluid dynamics solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU is applied to solve three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–
Stokes equations. Simulations with different complexities are performed. First, the wind turbine is parked. Second, the impact of
the wind turbine is simplified into equivalent forces and moments. Third, fully coupled dynamic analysis with wind and wave
excitation is conducted by utilizing the UALM. From the simulation, aerodynamic forces, including the unsteady aerodynamic
power and thrust, can be obtained, and hydrodynamic responses such as the six-degrees-of-freedom motions of the floating
platform and the mooring tensions are also available. The coupled responses of the FOWT for cases of different complexities are
analyzed based on the simulation results. Findings indicate that the coupling effects between the aerodynamics of the wind
turbine and the hydrodynamics of the floating platform are obvious. The aerodynamic loads have a significant effect on the
dynamic responses of the floating platform, and the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine has highly unsteady charac-
teristics due to the motions of the floating platform. A spar-type FOWT consisting of NREL-5-MW baseline wind turbine and
OC3-Hywind platform system is investigated. The aerodynamic forces can be obtained by the UALM. The 6DoF motions and
mooring tensions are predicted by the naoe-FOAM-SJTU. To research the coupling effects between the aerodynamics of the
wind turbine and the hydrodynamics of the floating platform, simulations with different complexities are performed. Fully
coupled aero-hydrodynamic characteristics of FOWTs, including aerodynamic loads, wake vortex, motion responses, and
mooring tensions, are compared and analyzed.

Keywords Floating offshore wind turbine . Unsteady aerodynamics . Hydrodynamic responses . Coupling effects .
naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver . Actuator line model

Highlights
• A spar-type FOWT consisting of NREL-5MW baseline wind turbine
and OC3-Hywind platform system is investigated.
1 Introduction
• The aerodynamic forces can be obtained by the UALM. The 6DoF
motions and mooring tensions are predicted by naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver. Fossil fuels have been the major source of energy in the last
• To research the coupling effects between the aerodynamics of the wind century. However, traditional fossil energy comes from non-
turbine and the hydrodynamics of the floating platform, simulations with
different complexities are performed.
renewable energy sources and causes serious environmental
• Fully coupled aero-hydrodynamic characteristics of FOWTs, including pollution. Therefore, the exploration of renewable and clean
aerodynamic loads, wake vortex, motion responses, and mooring ten- energies is becoming crucial to the future of human beings.
sions, are compared and analyzed. Wind energy is one of the most promising nonpolluting
renewable energy sources, and it is also the fastest growing
* Decheng Wan clean and renewable energy in recent years. An offshore wind
dcwan@sjtu.edu.cn
farm could experience average wind speeds 90% greater than
1
Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Ship and Deep-Sea a land-based wind farm (Archer and Jacobson 2005), which
Exploration, State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, School of means that floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have
Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao great potential to exploit the large amount of offshore wind
Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation
resources. Wind farms in deep waters are generally less sen-
sitive than onshore wind farms to space availability, noise
restriction, visual pollution, and regulatory problems (Bae
et al. 2011). However, most wind farm development has been
limited to land space or shallow water areas with depths that
do not exceed 50 m. In recent years, some countries have
begun to plan the construction offshore floating wind farms.
Considering that the total cost of fixed-mounted offshore wind
turbines increases with water depth, FOWTs can provide the
most cost-effective and reasonable approach in deep-sea areas
(Butterfield et al. 2005). Moreover, FOWTs are expected to a
large amount of clean electricity at a competitive price, unlike
other energy sources.
Although floating-type wind farms are more economical
than the fixed ones in offshore areas where the water depth
is more than 40 m (Henderson et al. 2002, 2004; Musial et al.
2004; Tong 1998), floating-type wind farms have many dis-
advantages, such as complex blade controls due to the motion
of the floating platform, large inertia loading on a tall tower
because of great floater accelerations, and expensive and com-
plicated installation processes (Luo et al. 2012). Moreover,
FOWTs are subjected to more complex loads than onshore
wind turbines are. In addition, considering the coupling effects
between the wind turbine and the floating platform, integrated
aero-hydrodynamic analysis for FOWTs with wind and wave
excitation is challenging.
Aerodynamics analysis of FOWTs is considerably dif-
ferent from that of fixed wind turbines because FOWTs
are unsteady as a result of the effects of platform motions
(Sebastian and Lackner 2012). A computational fluid dy-
namics (CFD) model for simulating the rotor under float-
ing platform-induced motions was developed to study the
unsteadiness and nonlinear aerodynamics in turbine oper-
ations (Wu and Nguyen 2017). CFD approaches were
used to study the aerodynamic performance of wind tur-
bines coupled with the prescribed motions of floating
platforms. Unsteady aerodynamic thrust and power tended
to vary considerably depending on the oscillation frequen-
cy and amplitude of the surge motion (Tran and Kim
2016). The power coefficient and the instantaneous aero-
dynamic forces coefficients changed due to their sensitiv-
ity to different pitching periods and pitching amplitudes
(Lei et al. 2017). Moreover, flow interaction phenomena
between the rotating wind turbine blades with oscillating
motions and generated blade-tip vortices were observed
(Tran and Dong 2015). In addition, scaled model tests
were conducted to research the influence of platform-
induced motions on the power performances of FOWTs
(Sant et al. 2015; Hansen et al. 2014; Ren et al. 2014;
Stewart et al. 2012).
Understanding the coupling effects between the aerody-
namics of wind turbines and the hydrodynamics of floating
platforms is beneficial to the design of FOWTs. The six-
83
degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) natural frequencies of the
FOWTs are typically much lower than those of rotor-
induced loadings (Roddier et al. 2010; Nielsen et al.
2006). Thus, the possibility of dynamic resonance with
high-frequency excitations is of much less concern.
However, tension-leg platform (TLP)-type FOWTs cannot
ignore dynamic resonance due to the high natural frequen-
cies in vertical-plane modes (Bae et al. 2010; Jagdale and
Ma 2010). In addition, the coupling effects between the
wind turbine and the floating platform for a 5 MW TLP-
type FOWT were studied (Matha et al. 2009). Some studies
have been conducted on the coupled aero-hydrodynamics
of spar-type FOWTs. Two independent computer pro-
grams, namely, SIMO/RIFLEX and HAWC2, were com-
bined into a coupled simulation tool to simulate the dy-
namic response of floating wind turbines exposed to wind,
wave, and current forces (Nielsen et al. 2006). Coupled
wave and wind-induced motions of the catenary moored
spar floating wind turbine under operational and extreme
sea states were analyzed. Advanced blade element momen-
tum theory was applied to study aerodynamics. Deep C
code was used to calculate the displacement force of moor-
ing lines, and dynamic motions of the system due to waves
in harsh environmental conditions were considered in
HAWC2 (Karimirad and Moan 2012; Karimirad et al.
2009). The effects of loads induced by wind and wave on
a spar-type floating wind turbine were discussed.
Aerodynamic loads were calculated by FAST (Ma et al.
2015). On the basis of a nonlinear computational model,
the motions of a 5-MW spar-type floating wind turbine in
operational and extreme sea states with irregular waves
were studied. Moreover, higher-aspect-ratio spars general-
ly led to lower mean pitch and surge responses
(Nematbakhsh et al. 2014). It is fair to say that the research
on integrated dynamic response for floating wind turbine is
limited and further research is required (Karimirad and
Moan 2010).
In this study, the coupled aero-hydrodynamic characteris-
tics of a spar-type 5-MW wind turbine are analyzed. An un-
steady actuator line model (UALM) (Li et al. 2015) coupled
with a two-phase CFD solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU is applied to
solve three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes
(RANS) equations. To research the coupling effects between
the aerodynamics of the wind turbine and the hydrodynamics
of the floating platform, simulations with different complexi-
ties are performed. From the simulations, aerodynamic char-
acteristics, including the unsteady aerodynamic power and
thrust, can be obtained, and hydrodynamic responses, such
as 6DoF motions and mooring tensions, are also available.
On the basis of the simulation results, the coupled responses
of the FOWT for cases of different complexities are analyzed.
Relevant discussions on the fully coupled aero-
hydrodynamics of the FOWT are presented.
84 Journal of Marine Science and Application

 
2 Numerical Method U z þU M;z
where ϕ ¼ arctan U θ −ΩrþU is the inflow angle, and θt is
M;θ

2.1 Unsteady Actuator Line Model the local twist angle. The body force can be given by the
following equation:
The actuator line model (ALM), which ignores the boundary ρjU rel j2 cN b
layer of the blade and does not need a complicated dynamic f ¼ ðL; DÞ ¼ ð C L eL þ C D eD Þ ð4Þ
2rdθdz
mesh, is a simplified method to study the aerodynamic perfor-
mance of wind turbines. This model can greatly reduce the where c is the chord length; Nb is the number of blades; CL and
quantity of grids and calculation time. The blade of the wind CD are the lift and drag coefficient, respectively; and eL and eD
turbine is simplified into an actuator line in ALM, and actuator denote the unit vectors in the directions of the lift and the drag,
lines that withstand body forces are divided into a series of respectively. The lift and drag coefficients are determined
discrete actuator units (Sørensen and Shen 2002). from measured or computed two-dimensional airfoil data that
When the ALM is applied to FOWT simulations, the influ- are corrected for three-dimensional effects.
ence of the motions of the floating platform on aerodynamic The body force needs to be smoothed to avoid singular
characteristics should be considered. Thus, the ALM needs to behavior before it is added to the momentum equations.
be modified to solve the unsteadiness problem caused by the
dynamic motion responses of the floating platform. The f ε ¼ f ⊗ηε ð5Þ
UALM is used in this work. In the UALM, the velocity vector
(UM) induced by the motions of the floating platform is added
where
to the velocity triangle (Fig. 1), which will lead to complex
"  #
interactions between the rotor and its wake. 1 d 2
To determine the body forces acting on the rotor blades, the ηε ðd Þ ¼ 3 3=2 exp − ð6Þ
ε π ε
blade element method combined with two-dimensional airfoil
characteristics is used. Figure 1 shows that a cross-sectional
d is the distance between the measured point and the initial
element at radius r defines the airfoil at the (θ, z) plane. The
force points on the rotor. ε is a constant that adjusts the
tangential and axial velocity in the inertial frame of reference
strength of regularization function. The influence of the pa-
are denoted as Uθ and Uz, respectively. The integral velocity
rameter ε has been studied previously, and some satisfactory
vector relationship can be described as follows:
conclusions have been obtained (Sørensen et al. 1998).
U rel ¼ U θ −Ω  r þ U z þ U M ð1Þ Then, the body force can be written as follows:
"   #
where Ω is the angular velocity of the rotor. N 1 d 2
The local velocity relative to the rotating blade is given as f ε ðx; y; z; t Þ ¼ ∑ f ðxi ; yi ; zi ; t Þ 3 3=2 exp − ð7Þ
i¼1 ε π ε
follows:
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2  2ffi fε is the loading, which is introduced as a body force on the
jU rel j ¼ U z þ U M;z þ U θ −Ωr þ U M;θ ð2Þ right hand of the momentum equations.
where UM, θ and UM, Z are the projections of UM on (θ, z)
plane.
2.2 Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Motions
The attack angle is defined as follows:

α ¼ ϕ−θt ð3Þ The CFD solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU is able to predict the mo-
tion responses of the floating platform. Two coordinate sys-
tems (Fig. 2) are used in solving 6DoF motion equations.
At each time step simulation, the motion equations are
solved in a platform-fixed coordinate system and the forces
are calculated in an earth-fixed coordinate system. The added
velocity induced by the dynamic motions of floating platform
is updated by the following equation:
U motion ¼ ½ J ðU c þ ωc  ðxi −xc ÞÞ ð8Þ

where [J] is the transformation matrix defined from the

platform-fixed coordinate to the earth-fixed coordinate; Uc
Fig. 1 Cross-sectional airfoil element and ωc denote the translation velocity and the angular velocity
Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation
Fig. 2 Coordinate systems
of the rotating center, respectively; and xc is the position co-
ordinate of the rotating center.
2.3 Coupled Analysis Method
In this work, the UALM is embedded into naoe-FOAM-
SJTU solver to establish a fully coupled CFD analysis tool
named FOWT-UALM-SJTU to study the coupled aero-
hydrodynamic characteristics of FOWTs. The frame diagram
of FOWT-UALM-SJTU is shown in Fig. 3. The aerodynamic
forces can be obtained by the UALM. The 6DoF motions and
mooring tensions are predicted by naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver.
Piecewise extrapolating method, a static analysis method, is
applied in this study to research the performance of the mooring
system. The gravity and tensile deformation of mooring lines are
taken into consideration in the calculation of mooring tensions.
naoe-FOAM-SJTU solver was developed by Professor
Decheng Wan and his CFD team based on the open-source
tool packages OpenFOAM. Volume of fluid method with
bounded compression technique is applied in the solver to
solve the two-phase flow problem with free surface. The k-ω
SST turbulence model is applied to solve the RANS equation
due to the closure problem. The governing equations can be
written as follows:
∇U ¼0 ð9Þ
∂ρU     
þ ∇  ρ U−U g U ¼ −∇pd −g  x∇ρ þ ∇  μeff ∇U
∂t
þð∇U Þ  ∇μeff þ f σ þ f s þ f ε ð10Þ
Fig. 3 Frame diagram of FOWT-UALM-SJTU
85
where U is the velocity of the field; Ug is the velocity of
mesh points; p d = p − ρg · x is the dynamic pressure,
subtracting the hydrostatic component from the total pres-
sure; g is the gravity of acceleration vector; ρ is the mixture
density with two phases; μeff = ρ(ν + νt) is the effective dy-
namic viscosity, in which ν and νt are kinematic viscosity
and eddy viscosity, respectively; fσ is the surface tension
term in the two-phase model and takes effect only on the
liquid-free surface; fs is the source term for the sponge
layer, which is set to avoid the wave reflection at the end
of the tank and takes effect only in the sponge layer; and fε
is the body force calculated from UALM, representing the
effect of turbine blades on the flow field.
The solving procedure of coupled aero-hydrodynamic sim-
ulations for the FOWTs is shown in Fig. 4. Coupling effects
between the wind turbine, floating platform, and mooring sys-
tem are considered. The calculated motion responses are in-
puts of UALM. The calculation of body force needs the infor-
mation of the motions of the floating platform. In addition, the
calculated aerodynamic forces are also inputs of the calcula-
tion of 6DoF motions. The aerodynamic forces obtained from
the UALM are added to the 6DoF motion equations.
3 Simulation Conditions
3.1 Geometric Model
This work aims to study the coupled aero-hydrodynamic char-
acteristics of the FOWTs. Thus, a spar-type FOWT consisting
Fig. 4 Solving procedure of coupled simulation
86 Journal of Marine Science and Application

of NREL-5-MW baseline wind turbine and OC3-Hywind
platform system is investigated in this paper. Figure 5 shows
the sketch of the OC3-Hywind turbine system.
The wind turbine of OC3-Hywind turbine system is NERL
offshore 5-MV baseline wind turbine, which is a conventional
three-bladed, upwind, variable speed, and variable blade-
pitch-to-feather controlled turbine. The main properties of
the wind turbine are listed in Table 1 (Jonkman et al. 2009).
The floating platform of the FOWT is the spar buoy con-
cept platform called Hywind. Detailed information about the
platform is given in Table 2 (Jonkman and Musial 2010).
The mooring system, which consists of three mooring
lines, is symmetrically distributed around the platform. The
main characteristics of the mooring system are shown in
Table 3. The arrangement of the mooring lines is shown in
Fig. 6. The wind and the wave are in the same direction.
3.2 Simulation Cases
Simulations with different complexities are performed to in-
vestigate the coupling effects between the wind turbine and
the floating platform. First, the wind turbine is parked. Thus,
the influence of the aerodynamic forces on the motion re-
sponses is ignored. Second, the impact of wind turbine is
simplified into equivalent forces and moments. The equivalent
force is the same as the time-averaged thrust obtained from the
coupled case (Table 4). The equivalent moment is equal to the
equivalent force multiplied by the distance between the center
of the wind turbine and the rotating center of the floating
platform. Third, fully coupled dynamic analysis with wind
and wave excitation is conducted.
Table 1 Specification of NERL 5-MW turbine
Rotor, hub diameter/m 126, 3
Hub height/m 90
Cut-in, rated, cut-out wind speed/(m·s−1) 3, 11.4, 25
Cut-in, rated rotor speed/(r·min−1) 6.9, 12.1
Rated tip speed/(m·s−1) 80
Overhang/m 5m
Shaft tilt, precone angle/° 5, 2.5
Rotor mass/kg 110 000
Nacelle mass/kg 240 000
Tower mass/kg 347 460
Coordinate location of overall CM (center of mass)/m (− 0.2, 0.0, 64.0)
Three cases listed in Table 4 are selected in this study. The
wind velocity in these cases is kept the same at a rated wind
velocity of U = 11.4 m/s. The rotor speed of the wind turbine
is set to a constant value Ω = 12.1 r/min, and control strategy
is not considered. The first-order Stokes wave is chosen as the
incident wave in all simulation cases. The period of the inci-
dent wave is T = 10 s, and the wave length is about λ = 156 m.
The wave height is H = 4 m.
3.3 Computation Domain and Grids
For cases 1 and 2, the aerodynamic performance of wind
turbine is not the research focus. To reduce the quality of
grids and save calculation time, the height of the air phase
is set to h1 = 40 m. The length and width of the computation
domain are 3λ and 2λ, respectively. The depth of the water
phase is set to be 70% of the real water depth (d = 320 m),
because the effect of the water depth on the motion responses
can be ignored at this water depth. The FOWT system is
placed in the middle of the computation domain, 1λ from
the inlet boundary. The length of the sponge layer before
the outlet boundary is 100 m. The computation domain for
cases 1 and 2 is shown in Fig. 7a. For case 3, fully coupled
simulation for the FOWT is conducted. Considering the

Table 2 Specification of Hywind platform

Depth to platform base below SWL/m 120

Elevation to platform top above SWL/m 10
Depth to top of taper below SWL/m 4
Depth to bottom of taper below SWL/m 12
Platform diameter above taper/m 6.5
Platform diameter below taper/m 9.4
Platform mass, including ballast/kg 7 466 330
CML location below SWL along platform center line/m 89.9155
Platform roll inertia about CM/(kg m2) 4 229 230 000
Platform pitch inertia about CM/(kg m2) 4 229 230 000
Platform yaw inertia about platform centerline/(kg·m2) 164 230 000
Fig. 5 Sketch of the FOWT
Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation 87

Table 3 Specification of the mooring system Table 4 Simulation cases

Number of mooring lines 3 Simulation conditions descriptions

Angle between adjacent lines/(°) 120
Case 1 Parked case: the wind turbine is parked
Depth to anchors below SWL (water depth)/m 320
Case 2 Simplified case: the impact of wind turbine is simplified
Depth to fairleads below SWL/m 70.0
into equivalent forces and moments
Radius to anchors from platform centerline/m 853.87
Case 3 Coupled case: fully coupled aero-hydrodynamic simulation
Radius to fairleads from platform centerline/m 5.2
Unstretched mooring line length/m 902.2
Mooring line diameter/m 0.09 2. Outlet boundary: the velocity condition is the inlet–outlet
Equivalent mooring line mass density/(kg m−1) 77.7066 condition defined in OpenFOAM, and the pressure con-
Equivalent mooring line mass weight in water/(N m−1) 689.094 dition is the Dirichlet boundary condition, where the pres-
Equivalent mooring line extensional stiffness/N 384 243 000 sure is constant;
Additional yaw spring stiffness/(Nm rad−1) 98 340 000 3. Top boundary: the velocity and pressure conditions are
Dirichlet boundary conditions;
4. Bottom boundary: the velocity and pressure conditions
expansion effect of the turbine wake, the height of the air are slip conditions;
phase is set to h2 = 280 m. The other arrangement of the 5. Left boundary and right boundary: boundary conditions
computation domain for case 3 is the same with cases 1 and are defined as a symmetric plane, in which the directional
2, as shown in Fig. 7b. derivative perpendicular to the boundary is equal to zero;
To capture the complex wake produced by the wind tur- 6. Body surface: the moving wall boundary condition is
bine, refined grids are utilized in the region behind the wind adopted.
turbine. The grids near the water surface are refined to capture
the free surface. The grid distribution is shown in Fig. 8.

3.4 Boundary Conditions

4 Results and Discussions
The setup of boundary conditions in all simulation cases is the
same, as shown below: 4.1 Aerodynamic Loads

Coupled aero-hydrodynamic simulation for the OC3-Hywind

1. Inlet boundary: the velocity condition is the wave inlet
condition, and the pressure condition is the Neumann
boundary condition, where the normal gradient of pres-
sure is equal to zero;
Fig. 6 Mooring system
turbine system is conducted in the coupled case, and the aero-
dynamic loads, including rotor torque and thrust, are calculat-
ed by the UALM. The time history curves of the aerodynamic
power and thrust are shown in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively.
The aerodynamic loads present evidently unsteady charac-
teristics. The aerodynamic power and thrust fluctuate greatly
due to the dynamic motion responses of floating platform, and
the aerodynamic loads change periodically. The varying peri-
od is about 10 s, which is approximately equal to the incident
wave period. This finding indicates that the main cause for the
periodical change of the aerodynamic loads is the pitch motion
of floating platform, because the pitch motion is a typical
wave-frequency motion.
Compared with the standard values of aerodynamic loads
in the literature (Jonkman et al. 2009), the average values of
aerodynamic loads in the coupled aero-hydrodynamic simu-
lation are smaller, as shown in Table 5. The aerodynamic
power and thrust are decreased by 11% and 14%, respectively.
This finding means that the coupling effects between the wind
turbine and the floating platform have a negative effect on the
aerodynamic power output.
Considering that the aerodynamic loads vary greatly due to
the motions of the floating platform and the aerodynamic
88 Journal of Marine Science and Application

(a) Cases 1 and 2

Fig. 9 Time history of transient aerodynamic power

4.2 Motion Responses

The floating platform is an important part of the FOWT, and

(b) Case 3
Fig. 7 Computation domain. a Cases 1 and 2. b Case 3
power output decreases because of the coupling effects, a
proper control strategy should be implemented to reduce the
adverse effect of the motion responses on the aerodynamic
performance of the FOWT.
the hydrodynamic performance of the floating platform has a
notable effect on the aerodynamic power output and operation
stability of the FOWT. To investigate the influence of aerody-
namic forces on the motion responses of the floating platform,
simulations with different complexities are performed. For the
parked case, the wind turbine is parked, thereby ensuring that
the influence of the aerodynamic forces can be ignored. For
the simplified case, aerodynamic forces are reduced to a con-
stant thrust and a moment acting on the rotating center of the
platform; this model is called the simplified forces model. For
the coupled case, fully coupled dynamic analysis with wind
and wave excitation is conducted, and the coupling effects
between the wind turbine and the floating platform are
considered.
The time history of the 6DoF motion responses of the
floating platform under different simulation conditions are
shown in Figs. 11a–f. The dash–dotted line represents the
motion responses in the parked case, while the dotted line
and the solid line correspond to the motion responses in the
simplified case and the coupled case, respectively.

(a) Case 1 and Case 2

(b) Case 3
Fig. 8 Grid distribution. a Case 1 and case 2. b Case 3 Fig. 10 Time history of transient aerodynamic thrust
Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation 89

Table 5 Comparison of the aerodynamic power and thrust value of surge motion exceeds 20 m, and the predicted
Standard Coupled Decreased mean value of pitch motion is about 4°, which leads to
value case value percentage/% strong interaction between the rotor and its wake.
Furthermore, this finding indicates that the motion re-
Power/MW 5.3 4.7 11 sponses of the floating platform will result in the unsteady
Thrust/kN 787 678 14 aerodynamic performance of the FOWT.
In the simplified case, as indicated by the dotted line in
Fig. 11, the motion responses of the platform are
Compared with the motion responses in the parked overpredicted compared with those in the coupled case.
case in which the effects of aerodynamic forces are ig- The maximum surge motion in the simplified case is 4 m
nored, the amplitude and fluctuation range of the motion larger than that in the coupled case, and the mean value of
responses in the simplified case and the coupled case are pitch motion in the simplified case is slightly greater than
much larger, as shown in Fig. 11. The reason for this that in the coupled case. Moreover, the amplitude of yaw
condition is that the influence of aerodynamic forces on motion in the simplified case is much larger than that in
the motion responses is taken into account in the simpli- the coupled case, while the mean value of yaw motion in
fied case and the coupled case. Findings indicate that the the simplified case is smaller than that in the coupled
aerodynamic forces derived from the wind turbine have a case. Although the influence of aerodynamic forces on
remarkable impact on the motion responses of the plat- the motion responses is taken into consideration in the
form. The influence of aerodynamic forces is especially simplified case, the coupling effects between the aerody-
significant for surge, pitch, and yaw motion. In the sim- namics of the wind turbine and the hydrodynamics of the
plified case and the coupled case, the predicted maximum floating platform are ignored. A considerable discrepancy

Fig. 11 Comparison results of the

platform motion responses. a
Surge. b Sway. c Heave. d Roll. e
Pitch. f Yaw

(a) Surge (d) Roll

(b) Sway (e) Pitch

(c) Heave (f) Yaw

90 Journal of Marine Science and Application

4.3 Mooring System Responses

The comparison results of the time history of mooring ten-

sions under different simulation conditions are shown in
Figs. 12a–c.
Compared with the result in Fig. 11a, the results in
Figs. 12a–c indicate that the trend of the mooring tension is
similar to the surge motion of floating platform, thereby sug-
gesting that the tensions of mooring lines mainly depend on
the amplitude of surge motion. In addition, a comparison be-
(a) Line #1
tween Figs. 12b, c shows that the tension of mooring line no. 3
is almost identical to that of mooring line no. 2 because moor-
ing line no. 3 is placed symmetric to mooring line no. 2 along
the wave direction. The slight difference between the tension
of mooring line no. 2 and that of mooring line no. 3 is due to
the sway motion of the floating platform.
The comparison results of the tension of mooring line no. 1
are analyzed to study the performance of the mooring system
under different simulation conditions. Figure 12a shows that
the mooring tension in the parked case is much smaller than
that in the simplified case and the coupled case. The mooring
(b) Line #2 tension in the simplified case is obviously larger than that in
the coupled case. As analyzed above, the surge motions under
different simulation conditions result in a discrepancy among
the mooring tensions. Large amplitude of surge motion corre-
sponds to a large mooring tension. Considering the significant
influence of aerodynamic forces on the motion responses, the
fluctuating range of the mooring tension is great due to the
large drift displacement of the platform. Thus, the risk of fail-
ure for mooring lines should be noted.

4.4 Wake Vortex

(c) Line #3
Fig. 12 Time history of mooring tensions. a Line no. 1. b Line no. 2. c The wake vortex has significant effects on the aerodynamic
Line no. 3 characteristics of wind turbines. The evolution of the wake
vortex at different times of an entire wave circle is illustrated
in Figs. 13 a–d. The wave is contoured by wave height, and
the mooring lines are represented by three black lines. The
is observed between the motion response results of the
second-order invariant of velocity gradient tensor, Q
simplified case and the coupled case. Furthermore, the
(Digraskar 2010), is used to visualize the wake vortex. Q is
results indicate that the coupling effects have a notable
calculated by the following equation:
effect on the motion responses, and the simplified force
model that considers the aerodynamic forces as a constant 1 
Qij ¼ Ωij  Ωij −S ij  S ij ð11Þ
thrust and a moment leads to the overprediction of motion 2
responses.
where Ωij and Sij denote the strength of the vortex and the
In summary, the motion responses of the FOWT under
shear strain rate, respectively.
wind and wave excitation are dominated by aerodynamic
forces instead of wave loads. The coupling effects between
the aerodynamics of the wind turbine and the hydrodynamics
of the floating platform considerably influence the motion 5 Conclusions
responses of the FOWT. Thus, fully coupled aero-
hydrodynamic simulation is necessary to study the motion In this paper, the UALM is embedded into our in-house two-
responses of the FOWT. phase CFD solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU to achieve coupled aero-
Numerical Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine by Coupled Aero-Hydrodynamic Simulation
(a) Time = 0
(b) Time = 0.25 T
Fig. 13 Instantaneous vortex structure of the rotor. a Time = 0. b Time = 0.25 T. c Time = 0.5 T. d Time = 0.75 T
hydrodynamic simulation of the OC3-Hywind turbine system.
Simulations with different complexities are performed. First,
the wind turbine is parked. Second, the impact of the wind
turbine is simplified into equivalent forces and moments.
Third, fully coupled dynamic analysis with wind and wave
excitation is conducted. On the basis of the simulation results,
fully coupled aero-hydrodynamic characteristics of FOWTs,
including aerodynamic loads, wake vortex, motion responses,
and mooring tensions, are compared and analyzed to study the
coupling effects between the aerodynamics of the wind turbine
and the hydrodynamics of the floating platform. The aerody-
namic loads change periodically change due to the motion
responses of the floating platform. The motions of the floating
platform have negative effects on the aerodynamic power out-
put. Compared with the standard value of the aerodynamic
loads, the aerodynamic power and thrust decreased by 11%
and 14%, respectively. Furthermore, the motion responses of
the floating platform are dominated by aerodynamic forces
derived from the wind turbine instead of the wave loads. The
coupling effects have significant effects on the motion re-
sponses. Fully coupled aero-hydrodynamic simulations are
necessary to study the dynamic motion responses of FOWTs.
For the mooring system, a large fluctuation of the mooring
tension is observed due to the large drift displacement of the
platform. Thus, the risk of failure for mooring lines should be
noted. Moreover, the wake vortex structure suggests that the
motion responses of the floating platform result in strong in-
teraction between the rotor and its wake, which increases the
instability of the aerodynamic performance. A proper control
strategy should be implemented to reduce the adverse effect of
motion responses on the aerodynamic performance of FOWTs.
To improve the understanding of coupling effects and provide
91
(c) Time = 0.5 T
(d) Time = 0.75 T
a more accurate numerical model for practical application, ad-
ditional coupled aero-hydrodynamic simulations for FOWTs
under different wind and wave conditions will be conducted in
the near future.
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