Offshore wind turbine foundation analysis - Sesam for offshore wind
Supporting the development of fixed and floating offshore wind turbine foundations
Offshore wind turbine foundations
Sesam software for offshore wind turbine foundation design and analysis is based on decades of experience in engineering of offshore structures. It provides a tailor-made solution for structural strength analysis of fixed and floating offshore wind support structures, such as wind turbine jackets, floating platforms, and substations. It can be used for conceptual and detailed design of the primary structure, as well as for the design of secondary steel such as boat landings and J-tubes. Besides this, Sesam can perform other lifecycle analyses such as transportation, lifting, and corrosion protection.
Wind turbine jacket design
Sesam for fixed OWT structures can be used for any complexity of structure, from monopiles and tripods to wind turbine jacket structures and substations. The software addresses the industry's need for a structural strength analysis solution to account for the combined effect of the wind turbine and hydrodynamic loads. Sesam is developed to address the challenges in wind turbine support structure design and is a complete system covering all aspects of fixed OWT installations.
The analysis functionality offered in Sesam's offshore wind turbine foundation design and analysis software is in accordance with international standards and major rules and standards, such as IEC61400-3, DNVGL-ST-0126, DNV-ST-0437 and DNV-RP-C203.
Key benefits of Sesam for fixed offshore wind
- Supports design and analysis of offshore wind turbine foundations, from conceptual model to detailed design
- Fatigue (FLS) analysis of damage equivalent loads as well as time domain loads based on IEC61400-3, DNVGL-ST-0126, DNVGL-ST-0437, and DNVGL-RP-C203
- Ultimate strength (ULS) analysis of simplified extreme loads, time domain loads and earthquake loads, based on API, AISC, Eurocode, ISO, and Norsok
- Interfaces for superelement analysis to/from Bladed, BHawC, VTS/Flex5. Wind turbine interface loads from any other 3rd party tool, such as HawC2 and FAST, are supported as well
- Postprocessing of integrated design results for ULS and FLS from Bladed
- Efficient computing using cloud FEA, with Sesam's cloud computing services, enabling further optimization and cost reduction
Our integrated solution for fixed offshore wind structures is based on the Sesam module GeniE for modelling. The time-domain analyses are executed from the offshore wind analysis software Sesam Wind Manager, including wave and wind turbine loads and postprocessing for FLS and ULS.
Floating wind turbine design
For floating wind turbine design, Sesam provides state of the art numerical tools for simulations of floating offshore wind turbines through the module Sima. Sima can perform a fully coupled analysis where the effects of wind, waves and current are combined with the effects of the wind turbine and the dynamic effects due to elastic response of slender structural members like the rotor blades, the tower, and the mooring lines.
If the structure is modelled by slender members only and the loads can be computed by Morison's equation, Sima will be a self-contained complete solution. For more general cases hydrodynamic coefficients can be computed up-front by the hydrodynamic analysis tool, HydroD, and the results from the coupled analysis can be read back into the general Sesam for floating structures solution for a full-fledged structural analysis of any type of floater including the coupling effects from the wind turbine.
Sima can also handle marine operations, which means that it will cover all phases in the life cycle of the floating offshore wind turbine, i.e. towing, installation, in-place and decommissioning. Transportation on a barge or heavy-lift vessel can be analyzed by Sesam for floating structures.
More detailed information about SIMA can be found at SINTEF.
Sesam also supports:
- Substations (monopiles, jackets, floating)
- Jack-up vessels
- Crew transport vessels (CTV)
- Service operation vessels (SOV)
- Marine operations (installation, lifting turbine parts, towing floating wind turbine)
