Research Initiation Award: Uncertainty Modeling, Probabilistic Models, and Life-cycle Reliability of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

研究启动奖为传统黑人学院和大学的教师提供支持，他们正在建立一个研究项目。期望该奖项有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善其所在机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。该奖项授予Prairie View A&amp；M大学在许多领域具有潜在的更广泛和社会影响。浮式海上风力涡轮机（FOWTs）被认为是最有前途的能源获取替代方案之一，具有广阔的可用空间和较少的限制和法规。该项目旨在分析由于海洋环境和水动力计算以及由于结构和机械系统的不确定性而产生的浮式海上风力涡轮机的不确定性，这些不确定性威胁着fowt的可靠性和可行性。本科生、高中生和社区大学的学生将通过这个项目获得研究经验。为了产生可持续和经济的电力，目前的浮式海上风力涡轮机技术面临着许多挑战。半潜式fowt被认为是最有前途的选择之一，但建造和维护成本问题尚未解决。本课题着重于不确定性的识别和结构安全系数的估算。本课题的研究目标是：了解FOWTs中存在的不确定性；结构性能和寿命周期结构可靠度预测；得到了在极端环境载荷作用下，独特考虑风力机空气动力学和浮体水动力学耦合不确定性的半潜式风力机结构设计安全系数。考虑到所发现的不确定性，将使用贝叶斯方法建立FOWTs结构部件的概率容量和需求模型。最后，利用所建立的模型对结构全寿命可靠度进行估计，并计算出楼架基础塔弯矩和剪力的安全系数。这项研究的结果可能最终减少目前的挑战，高成本的FOWTs。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building a research program. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at her home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Prairie View A&M University has potential broader and societal impact in a number of areas. Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have been considered as one of the most promising alternatives to access energy resources with vast available space and fewer restrictions and regulations. The project seeks to analyze floating offshore wind turbine uncertainties that arise due to the ocean environment and hydrodynamic calculations, as well as due to uncertainties in the structural and mechanical systems, which threaten the reliability and the feasibility of FOWTs. Undergraduate students, high school students and students from community colleges will gain research experiences through this project. The current floating offshore wind turbine technologies have challenges to be resolved in order to produce sustainable and cost-effective power. Semi-submersible type FOWTs are known to be one of the most promising options with construction and maintenance cost problems yet to be solved. This project focuses on identification of the uncertainties and on estimating the structural safety factors. The research objectives of this project are to: understand the uncertainties that exist in FOWTs; predict the structural behavior and life-cycle structural reliability of FOWTs; and obtain safety factors for structural design of semi-submersible-type FOWTs that uniquely consider the uncertainties and coupled dynamics of aerodynamics of the wind turbine and hydrodynamics of the floating body under extreme environmental loads. By considering the uncertainties found, the probabilistic capacity and demand models for structural components of FOWTs will be developed using a Bayesian Method. Lastly, the developed models will be used to estimate the life-cycle structural reliability and to obtain the safety factors for the base tower moment and shear forces of FOWTs. The results of this research may eventually reduce the current challenge of the high cost of FOWTs.