Floating Ice Load Reduction of Offshore Wind Turbines by Two Approaches

The offshore wind turbines (OWTs) constructed at the northern sea areas under cold climate are frequently subjected to floating ice loads. It is imperative to reduce the damage owing to the floating ice with some appropriate approaches. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the effectiveness of the tuned mass damper (TMD) and the ice-breaking cone for reducing floating ice loads on OWTs. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) 5 MW OWT, which is treated as a multibody system with rigid and flexible parts, is adopted as the example model here. The multiple loads taken into consideration in the fully coupled simulation include floating ice and turbulent wind. The aerodynamic load acting on the blades is solved by the blade element momentum method based on a full-field turbulent wind farm generated by the Kaimal spectrum. The Matlock model and the Ralston model are adopted for evaluating the floating ice loads on the cylindrical and conical structures, respectively. The TMD system in the nacelle and the ice-breaking cone on the tower at the mean sea level are the two load reduction approaches of concern in this paper. A weak aeroelastic simulation of the OWT model is conducted. The solution of flexibility effectiveness depends on some accurate mode shapes by the linear modal representation. Finally, Kane's method is used for predicting the motion of the whole OWT. The relevant results reveal some positive effectiveness of the TMD system and the ice-breaking cone for reducing the floating ice load. The displacement of tower top decreases significantly with the utilization of the two approaches. The TMD system has a better performance for the side-side displacement than the fore-aft displacement. By switching the ice failure mode from crushing to bending, the ice-breaking cone reduces the floating load more effectively than the TMD system. It affects equally significantly the fore-aft and side-side displacements.