Mooring System Design and Verification for a Floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

The aim of this study is to investigate the technical feasibility of an innovative vertical axis °oating wind turbine concept with the main focus on the design and veri¯cation of the mooring system. The study is developed through iterative processes in order to identify the optimum design for the new °oating wind turbine concept. The Ultimate Limit State (ULS) criteria have been considered to verify the integrity of the mooring system in the extreme environmental conditions with a 50-year return period. For this purpose, time domain dynamic analysis has been performed using the commercial software OrcaFlex [Orcina website, OrcaFlex software, https://www.orcina.com/]. Although the analysis is carried out for a speci¯c site deemed suitable for the project, the results can be used as an input for any future application in other locations. The present study is intended to be a proof of concept with a proposed scienti¯c framework for optimization of the mooring system which is considered to be a crucial part in the design of °oating wind turbines due to their complex dynamic behavior.