Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

How to float a wind turbine

  • Science Career
  • Published:
Reviews in Environmental Science and Bio/Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Far-offshore wind turbines are attractive in view of harnessing high-speed winds and reducing impact on population. When the sea is hundreds of metres deep, drilling wind turbines down to the seabed is too expensive. Today’s bottom-mounted foundations could be replaced by floating platforms, which can minimise the lateral wave-loads acting on the wind turbine and reduce the foundation cost in deep water. Computer models capable of calculating the motion of a full floating wind turbine are at an early stage of development. An efficient strategy to minimise the computational cost is also lacking. This contribution highlights how the motion of a floating wind turbine, and its interaction with the ocean, can be predicted by means of computer-model simulations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

References

  • Arapogianni A, Moccia J, Williams D, Phillips J (2011) Wind in our sails. Technical report, European Wind Energy Association

  • Heronemus W (1972) Power from the offshore winds. In: Proceedings of the 8th annual conference of the marine technology society

  • Jonkman J, Matha D (2011) Dynamics of offshore floating wind turbines—analysis of three concepts. Wind Energy 14:557–569

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Madslien J (2009) Floating challenge for offshore wind turbine. BBC News, Stavanger, Norway

    Google Scholar 

  • Mittal R, Iaccarino G (2005) Immersed boundary methods. Annu Rev Fluid Mech 37:239–261

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peskin C (1972) Flow patterns around heart valves: A numerical method. J Comput Phys 10:252–271

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roddier D, Weinstein J (2010) Floating wind turbines. Mech Eng 132(4):28–32

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author is supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development (grant agreement PIEF-GA-2010-272437). She is particularly grateful to the Applied Modelling and Computation Group (http://amcg.ese.ic.ac.uk), and its academic and research staff at Imperial College London, for hosting the Fellowship and offering support, training and fruitful discussions throughout the project. She further acknowledges, at Imperial College London, the Marine Renewable Energy Network hosted by the Energy Futures Lab (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/marinerenewableenergy), the High Performance Computing Service, the Postdoc Development Centre, and the Research Office. She finally thanks the Marie Curie Fellows Association (http://mcfa.eu) and the Belgian Vocatio Foundation (http://vocatio.be).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Modelling and Computation Group, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

    Axelle Viré

Authors
  1. Axelle Viré
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Axelle Viré.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Viré, A. How to float a wind turbine. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol 11, 223–226 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-012-9292-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-012-9292-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation