Short-term extreme response and fatigue damage of an integrated offshore renewable energy system

This study addresses short-term extreme response and fatigue damage of an integrated wind, wave and tidal energy system. The integrated concept is based on the combination of a spar type floating wind turbine, a wave energy converter and two tidal turbines. Aero-hydro-mooring coupled analysis is performed in time-domain to capture the dynamic response of the combined concept in a set of environmental conditions. The mean up-crossing rate method is used to evaluate the extreme response, which takes advantage of an extrapolation method to reduce the simulation sample size. The cumulative fatigue damage is computed based on the S-N method. Simulation results show that the tower base fore-aft bending moment is improved, in terms of extreme value and fatigue damage. Nevertheless, the tension force of a mooring line is worsened. The mooring line bears increased maximum tension due to the tidal turbine thrust force and it is subjected to higher fatigue damage load as well.