Floating offshore wind: FES Stinger-Keel model and wave tank testing for mooring design

Overview

As part of an Innovate UK funded project 2H Offshore (2H) and HR Wallingford (HRW) collaborated to increase the technology readiness level of the novel Stinger Keel floating wind foundation. This floating wind foundation is developed by Floating Energy Systems, and the work looked to develop the design further for application at North Sea floating wind farms.

A key objective of 2H and HRW was to establish the loading acting onto the foundation structure (such as pressure fields and mooring fairlead loads) to enable the design of the foundation to be further detailed by others within the project consortium. To facilitate this out 2H and HRW worked through a program to develop numerical models of the foundation, establish the design and configuration of the mooring system, and, use small-scale wave tank testing to establish the robustness and calibration of these models.

2H and HRW will discuss this scope of work and the challenges and outcomes of the project to support development of this novel floating offshore wind platform, including some of the lessons learned. The presentation will include:

• Introduction of the Floating Energy Systems Stinger Keel floating foundation and the background to its design
• An overview of the Innovate UK project undertaken, its objectives and the 2H and HRW scope
• Development of the floating foundation numerical models to support mooring system design and load definitions
• Establishing the mooring system design for input to the tank testing CFD modelling of the floating foundation and tank testing setup
• Outcomes from tank testing and learning from comparing numerical models with tank results
• Further development of the mooring system design for North Sea applications
• Other benefits of the loads established
• Summary and conclusions