Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Considerations For The Design Optimization Of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Blades, Evan M. Gaertner

Doctoral Dissertations

Floating offshore wind turbines are an immature technology with relatively high costs and risk associated with deployment. Of the few floating wind turbine prototypes and demonstration projects deployed in real metocean conditions, all have used standard turbines design for onshore or offshore fixed bottom conditions. This neglects the unique unsteady aerodynamics brought on by floating support structure motion. While the floating platform has been designed and optimized for a given rotor, the global system is suboptimal due to the rotor operating in conditions outside of which it was design for. If the potential offered by floating wind turbines is to …