The aerodynamics of floating offshore wind turbines in different working states during surge motion

The rotor of floating offshore wind turbines with platform motions may undergo different working states during its operation, e.g. from windmill working state to vortex ring and propeller working state. In this paper, an aerodynamic model based on a free wake vortex method is used to simulate the rotor un-dergoing surge motion. The associated change of working states of the rotor is evaluated quantitatively and visually. The results show that during a full cycle of the surge motion of the floating platform, the rotor experiences alternative onset of the windmill state, vortex ring state, and propeller state, while the later two occur only during the downwind motion of the rotor. The aerodynamic load change corre-sponding to different working states of the rotor indicates that the vortex ring state is the most unstable phase of the three.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper investigates the working state changes of the rotor in floating offshore wind turbines with platform motions, and quantitatively and visually evaluates them using an aerodynamic model. The results show that the rotor experiences alternating windmill, vortex ring, and propeller states during a full cycle of the surge motion of the floating platform, with the vortex ring state being the most unstable.