Abstract
Shared mooring has been proposed as one of the innovative technologies to reduce mooring and anchoring expenses for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs). Despite cost saving benefits, shared moorings introduce more complexity for the connected FOWTs than the conventional moorings. In this paper, we propose a nonlinear modelling approach for mooring configurations in Simpack and investigate the impact of a shared line mooring configuration on floater motions and mooring tensions of two connected FOWTs. First, we validate the nonlinear mooring modelling method through a comparison between OpenFAST and Simpack simulations of a 15-MW semi-submersible FOWT. Second, two 15-MW FOWTs with a shared mooring line configuration are further analyzed in Simpack to investigate the shared mooring impact. Different performances of the wind-wave loaded and unloaded FOWTs in two cases reflects the importance of considering nonlinear mooring stiffness in the modelling approach. By comparing the simulation results of two FOWTs using shared moorings and the single FOWT using conventional moorings, we identify the challenges of applying a shared mooring configuration that the surge displacements of the connected FOWTs increase significantly.
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