Abstract

This work describes the findings of a wind tunnel test campaign that investigated the aerodynamic response of a 15 MW floating wind turbine and studied how the aerodynamics affect the global response of the floating structure. The floating wind turbine, named Activefloat, has a concrete-based floater and is being developed in the EU H2020 project COREWIND. The experiment we present here was carried out in the atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel of Politecnico di Milano based on the hybrid hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) methodology developed in-house. In the experiment, the turbine is reproduced with a 1:100 scale model, featuring realistic control capabilities and aerodynamics. A variety of operating conditions and sea states is considered. It is found that rotor aerodynamic loads and the action of turbine controller affect damping of the platform pitch mode. Damping is minimum just above rated wind when closed-loop wind turbine control is used, and this results in more pronounced oscillations of platform pitch motion in realistic wave conditions.

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