Fatigue assessment of offshore wind turbines

The accuracy of estimated residual life for such structures is directly linked to the various numerical modelling approach. An accurate action is therefore required to ensure a reliable fatigue life estimation and hence the structural safety of all components affecting the modelling technique and analysis set-up under different environmental conditions.<br><br>In order to have an idea of the performance of different numerical modelling, a monopile wind turbine case study is selected that is located in the North Sea at a water depth of 30 m.

Firstly, a scaled prototype of the monopile is tested in the wave tank of Queen’s University Belfast and the same case created in OpenFoam for the Computational Fluid Dynamics study of hydrodynamic loads. Seven different load cases are selected and generated both in the wave tank and numerical model. The wave characteristics are selected in the regions that the body is slender relative to wavelength.