Bachelor/Master Thesis: Development of a fully-coupled framework for analysis of floating offshore wind turbine

The Chair for Wind Power Drives researches the behavior of drive systems in modern multi-megawatt wind turbines. Research topics are increasing the availability, robustness and energy efficiency of wind turbines as well as decreasing levelized cost of electricity. A combination of software development tools and modern system test benches are used for this.

Floating offshore wind is seen as one of the most promising developments for wind energy exploitation, as it would allow to generate power at deep water. There is a need to develop a fully-coupled model for FOWT to accurately predict dynamic responses under complicated environment.

In this thesis, you will develop a fully-coupled model including aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structural elasticity and control system for FOWT. The differences between the developed model and open-source model using the same underlying theory will be figured out. The accuracy and reliability of this model will be validated by comparing with other existing models. Based on this developed model, the overall performance and rotor loads due to the operation as a floating turbine will be studied.

Tasks:

• To be familiar with the multibody software Simpack.
• To model the aero-hydro-servo-elastic coupling frame for FOWT.
• To figure out the differences between Simpack model and OpenFAST, and to validate the developed fully-coupled model by comparing with existing model.
• To elaborate the overall performance and rotor loads induced by various wind-wave conditions.

Prerequisites:

• Motivation to work autonomously and responsibly
• Previous knowledge of multibody and its software (Simpack) are desirable, but not required
• Programming skills (MATLAB) are advantageous
• Background in mechanical engineering

We offer:

• Professional supervision and collaboration in a dedicated team
• Immediate start and rapid progress of the thesis
• Thesis can be written in English
• Possibility to publish the results in a paper depending on the quality of the thesis

We look forward to your application by email:

Jinqiu Pan, M. Sc.
Chair for Wind Power Drives

Campus Boulevard 61, 52074 Aachen
jinqiu.pan@cwd.rwth-aachen.de