Collaborative Research: Reliability-based Hurricane Risk Assessment for Offshore Wind Farms

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This collaborative research grant provides funding for a program of fundamental research into the assessment of hurricane-associated risk to Atlantic wind farms and hurricane resistant design of OWT support structures to overcome barriers to offshore wind energy development. The research program builds upon the bodies of knowledge associated with oil and gas platform development in the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico and wind energy development in the North and Baltic Seas. The project comprises four integrated research tasks: (1) the development of a probabilistic hurricane hazard modeling framework for the Atlantic coast; (2) a fragility analysis framework for OWT support structures including case studies of prototype support structures; (3) relationships between individual turbine fragility and wind farm reliability; and (4) novel design details for improving the robustness of OWT support structures to combined, hurricane induced, wind and wave loading. A vertically integrated, collaborative research team spanning from the undergraduate to full professor levels across two institutions of higher learning and a program of outreach including partnership with the Offshore Wind Energy IGERT program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and mentorship to high school youth in Boston through the Northeastern University Center for STEM Education promises to enrich the experience of student participants and to enhance this project through interdisciplinary interactions with the multidisciplinary faculty team.Meeting the national goal of generating 20 percent of total energy needs from renewable sources by 2030 should, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, include the installation of 54 GW of electricity generated from offshore wind. This, in turn, requires the transformational removal of barriers to offshore wind energy development. A recent U.S. National Academies report has identified the vulnerability of Atlantic wind farms to hurricanes as such a barrier, and this project addresses the engineering aspects of this barrier. The likelihood of Atlantic wind farms encountering hurricanes during their operational life adds to the cost of energy by increasing uncertainty associated with wind farm performance and therefore the associated financing and insurance costs. This collaborative research project focuses on offshore wind turbine (OWT) structures that are typical of those proposed for the Atlantic coast and that will therefore be exposed to extreme wind and wave loads. Probabilistic hurricane hazard modeling and fragility analysis of OWTs and development of recommendations for increased structural robustness are key components of this project, which builds upon the extensive knowledge available within the field of seismic engineering, including probabilistic hazard analysis, performance-based design concepts and non-linear dynamic modeling. Partnerships with industry will focus the direction of research to the specific needs of the wind energy and catastrophe risk industries.