Dynamic analyses on multiple arrays of floating offshore wind farm using OC5-DeepCwind floater with shared moorings

Mooring system design is critical for the deployment of floating offshore wind farms (FOWF). As the pursuit of offshore wind energy ventures into deeper waters, the application of floating structures is becoming increasingly feasible. Ensuring the stability and efficiency of these structures through robust mooring systems is essential. The paper examines various mooring configurations, evaluates their resilience against a range of environmental conditions, and develops optimized designs tailored for FOWF scenarios. A leap forward for exploiting wind resources in offshore environment setting is represented by FOWFs, which differ from fixed installations by being tethered to the ocean floor, providing the necessary buoyancy and stability for operation in deepwater locales. The key goal of this paper is to design and evaluate mooring systems that maintain both the stability and functional effectiveness of FOWFs, with considerations for environmental loads, coupled dynamic analyses, feasibility, and performance resilience. The paper also investigated existing mooring approaches in the context of FOWFs, analyzed environmental factors affecting mooring performance, used computational simulations to appraise diverse mooring concepts, evaluated the performance of various mooring arrangements, and suggested advancements in mooring solutions suitable for FOWFs. The results showed that the shared mooring systems with taut lines are feasible for 2, 4, 6 and 8 turbines in multiple arrays of FOWF in terms of stability and efficiency. The paper concluded that shared mooring systems are a viable and promising solution for FOWFs in offshore settings at water depths of 200 m.