High-Fidelity Hydrodynamic Simulations of a Slack-Moored Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Platform

We numerically simulate the hydrodynamic response of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) using computational fluid dynamics. The FOWT under consideration is a slack-moored 1:70 scale model of the UMaine VolturnUS-S semi- submersible platform. The test cases under consideration are (i) static equilibrium load cases, (ii) free decay tests, and (iii) two focused wave cases of different wave steepness. The FOWT is modelled using a two-phase Navier-Stokes solver inside the OpenFOAM-v2006 framework. The catenary mooring is computed by dynamically solving the equations of motion for an elastic cable using the MoodyCore solver. The results are shown to be in good agreement with measurements.