This study performed numerical investigations of a floating offshore wind turbine under a complex atmospheric boundary layer inflow. The complex and realistic ABL inflow was generated by large eddy simulations, and wind turbine blades were modeled by the actuator line model. The platform motions were solved by potential theory. A baseline case with a uniform inflow condition was conducted to provide some comparable data. The difference of the aerodynamic power in the two inflow scenarios is minor, except that small bumps in the atmospheric scenario are observed. The yaw moment is significantly enhanced as a result of the lateral asymmetry of the atmospheric inflow on the rotor plane. A significant observation of this study is the large-scale wake meandering caused by the presence of atmospheric turbulence structures. In addition, the high-velocity atmospheric airflow enters in the wind turbine wakes, and its mixing with the low-velocity wakes leads to a faster wake recovery.
In recent years, with the great development of society, traditional fossil resources have had difficulty meeting the significant energy demands. Wind energy harvesting has received increasing attention because wind is a nonpolluting, renewable resource (Chehouri et al., 2015), and the increase in harvesting is responsible for the promising growth of wind turbine technology. According to the 2021 Global Wind Energy Report (Global Wind Energy Council, 2021), the installed capacity of wind turbines in 2020 reached up to 93 GW, resulting in a 53% year-on-year increase. The development trend of wind turbines has gradually moved toward the large-scale and floating type (Asim et al., 2022), which has had significant impacts on the aerodynamic performance and fatigue loads of wind turbines subjected to the complex atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Consequently, it has become very necessary to study the dynamic responses of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) under a complex ABL inflow.
