In the field of renewable energy, floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) are currently a hot topic. Numerous numerical simulation programs have been developed to model the performance of FOWTs under wave condition in order to design and optimize them. To guarantee accurate results, numerical methods must, however, undergo model validation. Building a 1/300 scale model with a 3-leg catenary mooring allowed us to assess the OC3-Hywind spar platform's performance for this study.
To simulate real-world conditions, irregular wave states were generated in the Benha Faculty of Engineering laboratory where the model experiments were carried out. Our findings demonstrate that the surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch, and yaw responses of the model were accurately predicted by the Ansys-Aqwa numerical software. Moreover, the numerical software accurately predicted that the sway, roll, and yaw responses were significantly lower than the surge, heave, and yaw responses.
These results indicate that numerical simulation software, like Ansys-Aqwa, can provide precise predictions of the behavior of floating offshore wind turbines under wave conditions. The outcomes of our model testing can be used to verify the precision of these simulation programs and enhance their capacity for prediction.