Floating wind turbine response in uni- and multi-directional nonlinear waves by numerical and experimental investigations

Natural sea waves are typically multi-directional. However, the existing studies on the interaction of waves and structures mostly concentrate on uni-directional waves. In this study, using a higher-order boundary element method based on the nonlinear potential flow theory and the perturbation expansion technique, a numerical model is developed to investigate the hydrodynamic performance of a semi-submersible wind turbine foundation in uni- and multi-directional waves. Comprehensive validations with the wave-tank experiment are conducted. It is found that the significant platform response increases with the peak wave period in uni-directional irregular waves, while the high-frequency “energy” ratio changes little. The significant wave height hardly influences motion responses from either the time- or the frequency-domain perspective. In multi-directional irregular waves, the translational motions exhibit monotonicity with wave directionality. The energy concentration around the primary direction leads to a dominant wave-frequency motion and an increase in the high-frequency “energy” ratio. Although the individual modal motion responses are variable functions of wave nonlinearity, their averaged translational and rotational motions are nearly constant, indicating an energy transition or a trade-off relationship among the modal motions. In addition, unlike the uni-directional wave case, the low- and high-frequency “energy” ratios increase quadratically and decrease linearly with the significant wave height in multi-directional waves, respectively. All these findings demonstrate that wave directionality can change the wave-structure interaction properties and therefore needs to be adequately considered in engineering applications.