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Failure analysis of spar buoy floating offshore wind turbine systems

Shafiee, Mahmood (2023) Failure analysis of spar buoy floating offshore wind turbine systems. Innovative Infrastructure Solutions, 8 (28). Article Number 28 (2023). ISSN 2364-4176. E-ISSN 2364-4184. (doi:10.1007/s41062-022-00982-x) (KAR id:97852)

Abstract

Floating offshore wind energy is a new form of marine renewable energy which is attracting a great deal of attention worldwide. However, the concepts of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) are still in early stages of development and their failure properties are not yet fully understood. Compared to bottom-fixed wind turbines, FOWTs are subject to more extreme environmental conditions and significant mechanical stresses which may cause a higher degradation rate and shorter meantime-to-failure for components/structures. To fill the research gap, this paper aims to conduct qualitative and quantitative failure studies on an OC3 spar-type FOWT platform with 3 catenary mooring lines. The failure analyses are performed based on two well-established reliability engineering methodologies, namely, fault tree analysis (FTA) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). The most critical FOWT components are prioritized according to their failure likelihood as well as the risk-priority-number. Our results show a good agreement between the two methods with regard to failure criticality rankings. However, some differences between the results are also observed that are attributed to the difference between FTA and FMEA methodologies as the former incorporates the causes of various failure modes into analysis, whereas the latter is mainly adopted for a single random failure analysis. The results obtained from the FMEA study for the FOWT system will also be compared with those reported for bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines and some interesting conclusions are derived.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s41062-022-00982-x
Additional information: For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence (where permitted by UKRI, an Open Government Licence or CC BY ND public copyright licence may be used instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising
Uncontrolled keywords: Failure analysis, Floating ofshore wind turbine (FOWT), Materials and structures, Mooring system, Fault tree analysis (FTA), Failure mode and efects analysis (FMEA)
Subjects: T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Engineering and Digital Arts
Funders: Organisations -1 not found.
Depositing User: Mahmood Shafiee
Date Deposited: 08 Nov 2022 10:00 UTC
Last Modified: 21 Nov 2023 00:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/97852 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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