Fully coupled aero-hydrodynamic analysis of a biomimetic fractal semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine under wind-wave excitation conditions

With wind energy utilization shifting to the deep sea, floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have huge potential to improve the competitiveness of offshore wind energy generation. However, traditional FOWT systems are often in force imbalance due to the unique swaying characteristics caused by the unfixed foundation and high center of mass of the platform. Therefore, a novel bionic semi-submersible floating platform based on Victoria Amazonia (with random fractal structure) is proposed to increase the hydrodynamic stability of FOWT. A regular fractal structure with similar number of perforations and perforated area is also implemented to verify the effectiveness of the bionic FOWT. In this study, the unsteady computational fluid dynamic approach is adopted to simulate the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic response. More specifically, the dynamic fluid-body interaction module integrated in STAR-CCM+ is employed to establish a FOWT numerical model with rotating blades, tower, and mooring line system. Furthermore, the volume of fluid model in conjunction with the 6-DOF solver was used to efficiently solve the fluid-induced dynamic motion of FOWT in a multi-phase flow composed of air and water. Finally, the fully coupled calculation of the fractal structure FOWT was performed using the established reliable numerical model. The maximum average thrust and power of 736.43 kN and 5294.04 kW are obtained by random fractal FOWT in aerodynamic responses, while in hydrodynamic amplitude responses, the maximum decreases of 19.16% are obtained by both random fractal and regular fractal structures. As for amplitude responses in heave and surge, the random fractal FOWT of 12.91% and 5.05% decreases performs relatively better than the regular one (11.48% and 4.09% decreases). In addition, the visualization of unsteady flow fields and vortices in fractal structures is investigated in detail. Compared with the regular fractal structure, vortices within random fractal structure interact adequately with the pontoon walls, resulting in higher energy absorption effect and stability.