The floating wind turbine platform will have violent oscillatory motion under bad sea conditions, which will affect the aerodynamic characteristics of the tower, especially the wind turbine blades. How to use the dynamic boundary method to simulate the oscillatory motion of the floating wind turbine platform in waves is a subject worthy of study. Firstly, in this paper, the heave, pitch and surge motions of the offshore floating wind turbine platform are taken as the key points of dynamic boundary design, and an experimental hydraulic cradle with elastic fixed end and elastic mount was designed. Then, the consistency of motion characteristics of floating wind turbine blades between hydraulic cradle and FAST numerical simulation is analyzed and verified. Finally, the research results show that the hydraulic cradle composed of elastic fixed end and elastic mount can effectively simulate the oscillatory motion of the floating wind turbine platform in waves, which laid a foundation for the subsequent experimental research on the aerodynamic characteristics of floating wind turbine platform.
Wind energy is a clean renewable energy, which has become the focus of energy development in the world, and is also an important support for China to achieve the goal of "carbon neutrality" (Shi et al., 2021; Cheng et al., 2021). The available offshore wind energy in the eastern coastal area of China reaches 750 million KW, which has huge resource potential and good market environment. At present, the development and utilization of offshore wind energy resources in shallow seas is gradually becoming saturated. When the water depth is greater than 60m, the construction and maintenance costs of fixed offshore wind turbines rise sharply, and its safety is also difficult to be guaranteed. Therefore, offshore wind turbines are gradually developing from shallow seas to deep seas (Goupee et al., 2014; Farrugia et al., 2016). Floating offshore wind turbines, as a necessary technical means to develop deep offshore wind energy, have become an important research goal of offshore wind energy utilization. Compared with traditional fixed wind turbine platforms, floating wind turbines tend to experience harsher external environment and load, and their motion responses are more difficult to predict. Therefore, the research on the dynamic response of floating offshore wind turbine platforms is also a hot and difficult issue in the current wind energy field (Yu et al., 2015; Yue et al., 2020). Due to the huge cost and time of ocean tests, physical model tests and computer numerical simulations are usually used to study the dynamic response of floating wind turbines before actual ocean tests.
