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

研究启动奖为历史上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。预计该奖项有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善她所在机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。授予Prairie View A M University的奖项在许多领域具有潜在的更广泛的社会影响。浮式海上风力涡轮机（FOWT）已被认为是最有前途的替代方案之一，以获得能源资源，具有广阔的可用空间和较少的限制和法规。该项目旨在分析浮动海上风力涡轮机的不确定性，这些不确定性是由于海洋环境和水动力计算以及结构和机械系统的不确定性而产生的，这些不确定性威胁到FOWT的可靠性和可行性。本科生、高中生和社区学院的学生将通过本项目获得研究经验。当前的浮动海上风力涡轮机技术具有有待解决的挑战，以便产生可持续的和具有成本效益的电力。众所周知，半潜式FOWT是最有前途的选择之一，其建造和维护成本问题尚未解决。该项目的重点是识别的不确定性和估计的结构安全系数。该项目的研究目标是：了解FOWT中存在的不确定性;预测FOWT的结构行为和生命周期结构可靠性;获得半潜式FOWT结构设计的安全系数，该设计唯一考虑极端环境载荷下风力涡轮机的空气动力学和浮体的流体动力学的不确定性和耦合动力学。通过考虑发现的不确定性，概率容量和需求模型FOWT的结构部件将使用贝叶斯方法开发。最后，所开发的模型将被用来估计寿命周期的结构可靠性，并获得的基础塔力矩和剪力的FOWT的安全系数。这项研究的结果最终可能会降低目前FOWT高成本的挑战。

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.