Dynamic Modelling of Ice Rubble and Extrusion Loads on Offshore Wind Turbines in Crushing Interaction

• Main Author: Steggink, Maarten (author)
• Other Authors: Hendrikse, H. (mentor), Hammer, T.C. (mentor), van den Akker, Bart (mentor), Høyland, Knut (mentor), Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Offshore Wind Energy; Ice-structure interaction; Ice extrusion; Ice rubble; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9e0db332-348e-4996-8112-952889c49900

To accommodate the growing demand for renewable energy, installation of new offshore wind energy capacity is increasing in many countries. New projects will be proposed for waters in which floating (sea) ice is a common occurrence in winter. Currently, projects remain limited to regions with mild ice conditions, such as the Southern Baltic Sea, but projects further north are expected. In preparatory work for this thesis, performed at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energies, it was shown that (edgewise) blade loads increase significantly for Northern Baltic sites when compared to Southern Baltic sites due to ice induced vibrations. The phenomena of ice extrusion and rubble loads are expected to provide added damping to an ice-structure interaction system. This added damping may lead to less severe structural vibrations, and thus blade loads for an offshore wind turbine, than for a system with only intact ice crushing. VANILLA is the leading ice crushing model in the industry to evaluate the effects of ice induced vibrations for vertical offshore structures such as wind turbines, but the model currently does not (explicitly) consider ice extrusion and rubble loads. Therefore, the aim of this work is to investigate the phenomena of rubble and ice extrusion in crushing and propose a modelling approach. Following a literature study, a rubble model and an extrusion model are proposed as extensions of the VANILLA ice model. The rubble model shows to be consistent and compute plausible rubble loads for model and full scale, while the extrusion model only predicts reasonable extrusion loads at full scale. Forcing and dynamics found from using the Standard and Adjusted VANILLA model with simplified global bending mode shapes of the SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine were compared. Rubble loads were found to be small in magnitude and of negligible influence on the dynamics. The loads stemming from extrusion introduce additional damping to the system when the relative velocity between the structure and the ice increases, such ...