Comparing fatigue and ultimate loads of two- and three-bladed 20 MW floating offshore wind turbines

Abstract Two-bladed turbines could reduce costs in the whole turbine’s life cycle. Yet, the wind loads are less well distributed, and the rotor does not have the calm inertia of a rotating plate, like a three-bladed turbine. This paper should serve as a numerical basis to understand how different loads of large 20MW floating two- and three-bladed turbines actually are to enable a better estimation of implications from these loads. The most surprising finding is that the tower base bending loads do not increase for the floating two-bladed turbine compared to the floating three-bladed reference. The main tower excitation, known as the blade-passing frequency, happens two- instead of three times per revolution for a two-bladed turbine. For bottom-fixed turbines, an operation with the tower eigenfrequency close to this excitation causes severe loads, which is more likely for a two-bladed turbine. For most floating turbines, the tower eigenfrequency is much higher and happens to be in a bandwidth that serves two-bladed turbines better than three-bladed ones. However, it was also observed that the issue of tower resonance might, in general, be less critical for floating turbines due to a vast increase in tower damping. The highest increase in loads has been found at the tower top if no load alleviation concept, e.g. a teetering hinge or free-yaw, is utilized. Yaw and main bearing loads did not show any significant increase. The unique parked T-position exhibited a major benefit in storm conditions. The final results indicate that large floating two-bladed wind turbines may offer a valuable economic advantage when compared to three-bladed turbines of equal design maturity.