A coupled hydroelastic solver for floating wind turbines: Development, validation, and application
Abstract
Most hydro-aero-servo-elastic (HASE) simulation tools for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) model the platform as a rigid body, limiting their ability to predict internal structural loads. To address this, we present \acrshort{teddy}, a new hydroelastic solver coupling the hydrodynamic capabilities of the in-house DIEGO toolbox with the open-source Chrono multibody dynamics library. This integration enables the modeling of fully flexible floating platforms. % A multibody \gls{BEM} provides the frequency-domain load input for the time-domain simulation. These bodies represent hull parts of the floater and are connected to \gls{FEM} nodes. Consequently, potential-flow loads in the multibody framework are transferred to the \gls{FEM} model, implemented within Project::Chrono, which supports large deformations and nonlinear elasticity via the \gls{ANCF}. The resulting coupled tool is first verified against theoretical results and DIEGO rigid-body simulations, yielding errors below 1\% and 0.2\%, respectively. Subsequently, the code is validated against experimental measurements from a flexible spar-type \gls{FOWT}, showing close agreement with experimental strain and motions \gls{RAO} (errors under 3.5\%). A slightly higher discrepancy of 9\% is found for the tower-base bending moment RAO, which is attributed to uncertainties in the mass distribution of the experimental load cell. % Furthermore, an analysis of a generic tri-floater foundation is conducted with two different hydrodynamic load models. This generic tri-floater is extensively described to be reproducible, and the corresponding results are presented and analyzed. % Specifically, several significant bending-moment peaks, with a normalized RAO reaching up to 20~MN·m/m, are observed in the brace structures at specific wave frequencies, particularly at T=6~s where column spacing matches the incident wavelength. This underscores the critical need for hydroelastic modeling in the early design stages. %
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BibTeX
@article{robaux2026coupled,
title = {{A coupled hydroelastic solver for floating wind turbines: Development, validation, and application}},
author = {Fabien Robaux and Claudine Halbout and Titouan Ouvrard and Christophe Peyrard},
journal = {Ocean Engineering},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.oceaneng.2026.128610},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05798983v1},
note = {CC BY-NC 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - A coupled hydroelastic solver for floating wind turbines: Development, validation, and application
AU - Fabien Robaux
AU - Claudine Halbout
AU - Titouan Ouvrard
AU - Christophe Peyrard
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
JO - Ocean Engineering
DO - 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2026.128610
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05798983v1
AB - Most hydro-aero-servo-elastic (HASE) simulation tools for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) model the platform as a rigid body, limiting their ability to predict internal structural loads. To address this, we present \acrshort{teddy}, a new hydroelastic solver coupling the hydrodynamic capabilities of the in-house DIEGO toolbox with the open-source Chrono multibody dynamics library. This integration enables the modeling of fully flexible floating platforms. % A multibody \gls{BEM} provides the frequency-domain load input for the time-domain simulation. These bodies represent hull parts of the floater and are connected to \gls{FEM} nodes. Consequently, potential-flow loads in the multibody framework are transferred to the \gls{FEM} model, implemented within Project::Chrono, which supports large deformations and nonlinear elasticity via the \gls{ANCF}. The resulting coupled tool is first verified against theoretical results and DIEGO rigid-body simulations, yielding errors below 1\% and 0.2\%, respectively. Subsequently, the code is validated against experimental measurements from a flexible spar-type \gls{FOWT}, showing close agreement with experimental strain and motions \gls{RAO} (errors under 3.5\%). A slightly higher discrepancy of 9\% is found for the tower-base bending moment RAO, which is attributed to uncertainties in the mass distribution of the experimental load cell. % Furthermore, an analysis of a generic tri-floater foundation is conducted with two different hydrodynamic load models. This generic tri-floater is extensively described to be reproducible, and the corresponding results are presented and analyzed. % Specifically, several significant bending-moment peaks, with a normalized RAO reaching up to 20~MN·m/m, are observed in the brace structures at specific wave frequencies, particularly at T=6~s where column spacing matches the incident wavelength. This underscores the critical need for hydroelastic modeling in the early design stages. %
SN - 0029-8018
SN - 1873-5258
ER -