Assessment of potential sites for a non-linear mooring system in floating offshore wind applications

Abstract

Effective station-keeping of turbines across a range of environmental conditions is critical for the development of the floating wind industry. This paper investigates the influence of environmental condi-tions and water depth at the deployment site on the load reduction potential of the Intelligent Mooring System (IMS), a non-linear mooring component. The IMS is modelled as part of the mooring system for the OC4 semi-submersible Floating Wind Turbine (FWT) using a FAST-OrcaFlex interface. Site-specific metocean pa-rameters from the ECMWF database are used to calculate mooring loads at FWT deployed at two sites with variable depth, with and without the IMS as part of the mooring system to assess its load reduction potential. The results indicate that the IMS has a larger load reduction potential in shallow water depth. This mooring design could thus address the design challenges for shallow water floating wind farms currently.