Advancement of Chalmers Research in Offshore Renewable Energy

Research Project, 2020 – 2021

The energy potential in offshore renewable energy (ORE) resources, including offshore wind, tidal, and wave resources, is sufficient to support the electricity demand world-wide. For any ORE harvesting device, the mooring plays a vital role in the device’s functionality, integrity and economic value. Typically, floating ORE devices are designed with no redundancy in the mooring system to keep expenditure low. A failure in one mooring component can be catastrophic to the entire ORE system because the ORE device cannot remain at its expected location or maintain its functionality. In contrast to other offshore structures such as aquaculture cages and oil platforms, ORE systems are expected to operate under unmanned conditions for a decade-scale duration to minimise the costs of operation and energy generation, posing stringent requirements on the mooring design with regard to its reliability and long-term performance.

The current applications of a methodology developed on the Division of Marine Technology have focused on elastic mooring materials used in wave energy systems. For a floating wave energy system, the effects of mooring system on the functionality of the wave energy system in operational seas and the survivability in sea conditions need to be further investigated. As for a floating wind turbine, the mooring system in survivability conditions plays a vital role. The purpose with this project is to offer Dr Shun-Han Yang the possibility to extend the applicability of our analysis framework to more ORE applications using generic mooring materials, new mooring systems with nonlinear responses and possibly also retardation and load-rate-dependent effects, which are important for synthetic ropes. An effective way to advance our research and also to support Dr Shun-Han Yang in her research career is to spend 6-months in a research visit to the Department of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim (Norway).