Experimental Verification of the Hydro-Elastic Model of a Scaled Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

Modeling is essential for designing control and making prediction. For the case of floating offshore wind turbine, providing a model that is validated is a challenging task as testing prototypes in the field are expensive and difficult and it may cause loss of turbine. For this reason, wind turbines are scaled down to be tested at a wind and wave laboratory where deep sea environment is realized after scaling. In this paper, theoretical hydro-elastic model of a floating offshore wind turbine is presented. The hydro-elastic model that is simulated both by a Simulink model and by high fidelity wind turbine simulation tool, FAST, is then verified by laboratory experiments. A comparison is performed to show the model dynamics compared with the experimental results. Presented results show that the model of the laboratory-scale wind turbine correctly represents the main dynamic behavior of the theoretical model.