A Study on Effect of Aerodynamic Loads on Mooring Line Responses of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

† This paper presents effect of aerodynamic loads on mooring line responses of a floating offshore wind turbine. A Matlab code based on blade element momentum (BEM) theory is developed to consider aerodynamic loads acting on NREL 5MW wind turbine. The aerodynamic loads are coupled with time-domain hydrodynamic analyses using one-way interaction scheme of the wave and wind loads. A semi-submersible floating platform which is from Offshore Code Comparison Collaborative Continuation(OC4) DeepCWind platform is used with catenary mooring lines simply composed of studless chain links. Average values of mooring peak tensions obtained from aerodynamic load consideration are significantly increased compared to those from simple wind drag force consideration. Consideration of aerodynamic loads also yield larger tension ranges which can be important factor to reduce fatigue life of the mooring lines.