PhD Studentship in Offshore Energy: Design optimisation of floating offshore wind turbins

Location: Penryn Campus; Cornwall; UK; TR10 9FE

Project Description:
The most important factors that influence the lifetime and reliability of a wind turbine system are the aerodynamic loads, which are dependent on the operating environment. When designing a wind turbine, it must maintain its structural stability in different conditions, so adapting the shape of the blades and dimensions of the tower is critical to optimise its performance, stability and survivability. The operating environment for offshore wind turbines is significantly different to that for land based turbines and offshore wind turbines are subjected to different extreme conditions than onshore wind turbines. In addition, floating offshore wind turbines are subjected to hydrodynamic forces from waves as well as large oscillations from aerodynamic forces from the wind. For this reason research on load and fatigue analysis of wind turbine blades for various conditions of wind speed and turbulence is essential in this field.

This project will investigate the load and fatigue on floating wind turbines using a variety of computational modelling approaches. The engineering parameters of the wind turbine will be examined using aerodynamic and structural analysis using a Matlab blade element-momentum (BEM) code, validated against separate 3D CFD modelling. The BEM code will take into account the dynamic stresses and fatigue loads. Based on this approach optimization processes will be developed using surrogate modelling and multi-objective Genetic Algorithm approaches, and also Adjoint Optimisation methods.