The potential of Offshore Wind Turbines (OWTs) is nowadays witnessed in the global energy market, with their numbers growing year by year. A significant number of OWTs are supported below the sea level by jacket (truss) structures, resting on seabed foundations. The fact that the support structure and the foundation are commonly designed independently may result in greater consumption of material and design efforts. Considering the large numbers of turbines to be constructed in the next future and the high cost involved in their construction, it is pivotal to minimize the expenses for their production in particular material and design costs, to make them more competitive.
In this paper, truss layout optimization (TLO) [1] is used as a conceptual design tool for the jacket, and the potential for this to be extended to include the foundations also is considered through (i) simple foundation models and (ii) combination with discontinuity layout optimization (DLO) [2]. Such an approach should help to achieve the minimum cost in terms of material and design efforts as suggested in [3]. While TLO identifies the optimal layout of elements in a truss to carry a given set of loads, DLO, utilising similar mathematical concepts, identifies the critical layout of discontinuities (e.g. slip-lines) in a translational failure mechanism. Loads are applied through the OWT Rotor Nacelle Assembly (RNA). The potential efficacy and the capability of the combined formulation are discussed.
The global goal of a reduction in carbon pollution needs now more than ever the increasing incorporation of industries to prevent the Earth from global warming and other environmental problems. The energy sector is one of the most relevant in terms of CO2 emissions since it uses mainly fossil fuels to generate energy. Therefore, in the last years, renewable energies such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass are becoming a valid alternative to fossil energy [4,5]. Among the different renewable energy technologies, wind power has seen the highest growth due to its sustainability with an emphasis on sea application (where the visual impact is smaller), with the number of Offshore Wind Turbines (OWTs) growing year by year. Including new hubs such as the Mediterranean Sea [6, 7], the US East coast [8,9].
