Relative Assessment of Fatigue Loads for Offshore Wind Turbine Support Structures

Time domain analyses of Offshore Wind Turbines involve a lot of computational effort. In this paper, we present a method for reducing this effort by using results from analyses with shorter simulation lengths to predict the results of the longer simulations lengths required by the standards. This involves using simple statistical treatment of the first 10 minutes of simulation data, and a subsequent linear regression, to predict the damage equivalent load of the full 60 minutes simulation. With some reservations about the general applicability of the method, the results are promising. Some suggestions for further investigations and developments of the presented methods are discussed.