Floating wind turbines structural details fatigue life assessment

Area of Science:

• Structural Engineering
• Marine Renewable Energy
• Materials Science

Background:

• Offshore wind turbines require long operational lifespans, necessitating robust fatigue damage prediction.
• Environmental loads from wind and waves can cause premature material cracking in offshore floating wind turbines.
• Limited temporal data from numerical modeling or direct measurements hinders accurate fatigue life assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop advanced fatigue assessment methods for offshore wind turbines utilizing limited datasets.
• To improve the accuracy and efficiency of predicting cumulative fatigue damage in offshore structures.
• To enhance the structural reliability and operational safety of offshore wind energy projects.

Main Methods:

• Incorporation of in-situ environmental conditions to assess offshore floating wind turbine tower base stresses.
• Assessment of structural cumulative fatigue damage using a novel deconvolution extrapolation technique.
• Validation of the deconvolution extrapolation method with artificially reduced datasets.

Main Results:

• The deconvolution extrapolation method accurately predicts long-term fatigue damage.
• Results from the novel method closely matched fatigue damage calculated from full datasets.
• The recommended method demonstrated significantly more efficient dataset utilization compared to direct fatigue estimation.

Conclusions:

• The novel deconvolution extrapolation method offers a more efficient approach to fatigue assessment with limited data.
• Accurate fatigue assessment is vital for the structural reliability, design, and safety of offshore wind turbines.
• This research contributes to the development of reliable fatigue prediction tools for offshore energy infrastructure.