The global power demand from renewable sources is growing. One of a very favorable solution which meets severe environmental protection requirements are the offshore wind turbines. The offshore wind energy sector has experienced very fast development over last decade. Offshore wind farms, in comparison with onshore applications, can provide increased efficiency with reduced noise, visual, transportation and installation con-flicts. Together with increased power of the turbines the support structures are growing in size and weight. Many types of the support structures are being used depending mainly on the water depth. For a shallow wa-ters the gravity based solutions are commonly used. For a water depth up to 25-30 m a mono pile type founda-tion are the most common solution. For a water depth over 30 m, jacket and tripod solutions are being used but in a very limited scale. The support structures for water depths over 50 m are under development including floating and tension leg solutions. The need of installation the wind turbines with a single power above 5MW at sites with a water depth over 30 m brings technological and economic issues. One of a challenge is develop-ing cost efficient solutions for the support structures. This paper presents one of the most important part of a feasibility study of the untypical concept of gravity based structure for the water depth of 40m. Global strength analysis of a newly designed steel support structure is presented.
Authors
Additional information
- Category
- Publikacja monograficzna
- Type
- rozdział, artykuł w książce - dziele zbiorowym /podręczniku w języku o zasięgu międzynarodowym
- Language
- angielski
- Publication year
- 2015
