Semi-analytical numerical approach for the structural dynamic response analysis of spar floating substructure for offshore wind turbine

A semi-analytical numerical approach for the effective structural dynamic response analysis of spar floating substructure for offshore wind turbine subject to wave-induced excitation is introduced in this paper. The wave-induced rigid body motions at the center of mass are analytically solved using the dynamic equations of rigid ship motion. After that, the flexible structural dynamic responses of spar floating substructure for offshore wind turbine are numerically analyzed by letting the analytically derived rigid body motions be the external dynamic loading. Restricted to one-dimensional sinusoidal wave excitation at sea state 3, pitch and heave motions are considered. Through the numerical experiments, the time responses of heave and pitch motions are solved and the wave-induced dynamic displacement and effective stress of flexible floating substructure are investigated. The hydrodynamic interaction between wave and structure is modeled by means of added mass and wave damping, and its modeling accuracy is verified from the comparison of natural frequencies obtained by experiment with a 1/100 scale model.