The main objective of this task is to design and evaluate possible innovative concepts for bottom-mounted and floating offshore wind turbine concepts and finally demonstrate the developed solutions in different reference designs.
In the bottom-mounted design part of Task 4.3 the first action will be to design and evaluate innovative solutions for very large wind turbines in deep water. This process will be closely linked to the developed innovations of Task 4.1, where the concept designs in Task 4.3 will influence the design needs for the component level and vice versa.
The final goal is to demonstrate two solutions for 10MW wind turbines (i.e. one using steel-type structures and a second one using hybrids) and an innovative design concept for future 20MW wind turbine application, where the latter will set the targets to be fulfilled in terms of component and method development for the future in order to make such applications possible.
For the floater part, the start will again be to design and evaluate different concepts based on the innovative methods of Task 4.2. Here a particular emphasis will be on the general design process of floating wind turbines, as so far no industry-standard exists in terms of standards, guidelines and procedures (e.g. design load cases).
As a further link to the work in Task 4.2, the newly developed concepts will deal as a basis for the fabrication of scale-models for the wave tank tests.
Finally the major deliverable of this sub-task is to design two floater concepts, namely for a horizontal and a vertical axis turbine application in the 10MW scale, using the validated methods and tools from Task 4.2 but also the developed design procedure and standards. These structures will then serve as a reference for large-scale floater applications in European water and thus enable a faster time-to-market of this technology.