Platform Stabilization and Load Reduction of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines using Dynamic Vibration Absorbers

Floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) is deemed the primary solution to the future penetration of wind power generation into deep water, while desirable FOWT operation faces significant challenge of under-actuation to meet the control objectives for platform stability, power regulation and load reduction. It is desirable to develop simple, low-cost and low-power actuation schemes for FOWT platform stabilization. In this paper, a dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) scheme is proposed to suppress the platform pitch and roll motion for FOWTs with tensioned-leg platform (TLP). With DVAs installed on each spoke of platform, both passive and active control can be possible for platform stabilization. A simulation model of the DVA is developed in Simulink, along with an interface to the TLP model of FOWT in NREL's FAST platform. Simulations are performed on the 5MW WindPACT model for 9 m/s and 18 m/s turbulent wind inputs. The results show that the proposed DVA strategy can significantly suppress the platform motion as well as reduce the tower loads with reasonably low power consumption.