Ship collision impact on the structural load of an offshore wind turbine

Abstract When a maintenance and operations ship is berthing, there is a chance the ship may collide into the wind turbine. When these ships collide into wind turbine structures, this can result in significant changes to the foundation and structure of the wind turbine. In this paper, the structural load of a 4 MW offshore wind turbine was analyzed during a collision with an operations and maintenance ship. The variations in the wind speeds on hub height, waves, and the sea currents were measured. The dynamic simulation of the wind turbine was carried out using the test data as the input parameters. As a result, the load condition of the turbine without a collision was obtained. Finally, the measured turbine load was compared with the simulation results. This study shows that the collision of the operation and the maintenance ship increases the bending moments at the tower’s bottom and the blade’s roots.