IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v18y2025i15p4140-d1717543.html

Experimental Study on the Hydrodynamic Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Under Focused Wave Conditions

Author

Listed:
  • Hanbo Zhai

    (Institute of Science and Technology Research, China Three Gorges Corporation, Beijing 210098, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Chaojun Yan

    (Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Wei Shi

    (Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China)

  • Lixian Zhang

    (School of Civil Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China)

  • Xinmeng Zeng

    (College of Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China)

  • Xu Han

    (Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China)

  • Constantine Michailides

    (Civil Engineering Department, International Hellenic University, 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece)

Abstract

The strong nonlinearity of shallow-water waves significantly affects the dynamic response of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), introducing additional complexity in motion behavior. This study presents a series of 1:80-scale experiments conducted on a 5 MW FOWT at a 50 m water depth, under regular, irregular, and focused wave conditions. The tests were conducted under regular, irregular, and focused wave conditions. The results show that, under both regular and irregular wave conditions, the platform’s motion and mooring tension increased as the wave period became longer, indicating a greater energy transfer and stronger coupling effects at lower wave frequencies. Specifically, in irregular seas, mooring tension increased by 16% between moderate and high sea states, with pronounced surge–pitch coupling near the natural frequency. Under focused wave conditions, the platform experienced significant surge displacement due to the impact of large wave crests, followed by free-decay behavior. Meanwhile, the pitch amplitude increased by up to 27%, and mooring line tension rose by 16% as the wave steepness intensified. These findings provide valuable insights for the design and optimization of FOWTs in complex marine environments, particularly under extreme wave conditions. Additionally, they contribute to the refinement of relevant numerical simulation methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanbo Zhai & Chaojun Yan & Wei Shi & Lixian Zhang & Xinmeng Zeng & Xu Han & Constantine Michailides, 2025. "Experimental Study on the Hydrodynamic Analysis of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Under Focused Wave Conditions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(15), pages 1-20, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:15:p:4140-:d:1717543
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/15/4140/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/15/4140/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tian, Zhongmei & Shi, Wei & Li, Xin & Park, Yonghui & Jiang, Zhiyu & Wu, Ji, 2025. "Numerical simulations of floating offshore wind turbines with shared mooring under current-only conditions," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hu, Lehan & Shi, Wei & Hu, Weifei & Chai, Wei & Hu, Zhiqiang & Wu, Jun & Li, Xin, 2025. "Short-term prediction of mooring tension for floating offshore wind turbines under typhoon conditions based on the VMD-MI-LSTM method," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    2. Wang, Jiazhi & Song, Zhaobo & Shi, Wei & Wang, Shuaishuai & Wang, Wenhua & Haider, Rizwan & Li, Xin, 2025. "Design and coupled analysis of a novel floating offshore wind turbine combined with a fish cage for deep water," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    3. Shi, Wei & Wang, Jiazhi & Ren, Yajun & Wang, Shuaishuai & Venugopal, Vengatesan & Han, Xu, 2025. "Novel conceptual design and performance analysis of a semi-submersible platform for 22 MW floating offshore wind turbine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).
    4. Li, Changen & Chen, Peng & Shui, Yidi & Cheng, Zhengshun & Wang, Shuaishuai & Erfort, Gareth, 2025. "An efficient integrated optimization framework for conceptual design of floater for floating wind turbines: A case study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    5. He, Zixiao & Yang, Xudong & Sun, Haiying, 2026. "A review on modeling, simulation and experiment of dynamic wake effect of floating offshore wind turbines," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 406(C).
    6. Wang, Jiazhi & Shi, Wei & Ren, Yajun & Ran, Xiaoming & Collu, Maurizio & Venugopal, Vengatesan & Zhao, Haisheng, 2026. "An integrated multi-objective optimization framework for large-scale floating offshore wind turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    7. Yi Yang & Chenyu Liang & Shi Liu & Jiale Jiang & Zheng Huang & Chonggan Liang & Wenjun Ou & Tao Tao & Mingsheng Chen, 2025. "Frequency and Time Domain Simulations of a 15 MW Floating Wind Turbine Integrating with Multiple Flap-Type WECs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-28, March.
    8. Paduano, Bruno, 2026. "Current status and perspectives on shared moorings for offshore floating renewable energy systems: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PC).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:15:p:4140-:d:1717543. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.