Yichi Zhang | School of Engineering

Project supervisors

Project description

I am investigating the integrated dynamic responses of a spar type floating wind turbine under collision scenarios. My results will increase understanding of the collision mechanisms in external and internal dynamics. They will provide valuable information in the design of floating wind turbines.

Methodology and objectives

I am exploring external and internal dynamic responses. The former addresses the problems of predicting the global kinetic characteristics of platform and wind turbines. The latter focuses on the structural deformation mode and crashworthiness analysis.

I am developing a 3D theoretical model to analyse the external dynamic responses. I have based it on previous studies. It will model ship impact against a spar floating wind turbine. This model solves the problem during collision. I will combine it with DARwind code, an in-house program for offshore floating wind turbine simulation.

I am adopting nonlinear finite element methods for the internal dynamic responses. I am using LS-DYNA, a famous explicit dynamic analysis program. Floating wind turbines are usually subjected to complicated loads. During the collision, we need to consider a variety of loads. THse include aerodynamic, hydrodynamic, and mooring loads. But modelling air and water with OFWT structures is expensive. The calculation cost of time and work is prohibitive. Thus, I will carry out further development of LS-DYNA in a user-defined subroutine. I will undertake some programming work to calculate aero-hydro-mooring loads in each analysis step and couple it with structural analysis.