Hydrodynamic response of a FOWT semi-submersible under regular waves using CFD - Verification and validation

In this work an extensive verification and validation study is performed to evaluate the accuracy and credibility
for CFD simulations of hydrodynamic response of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) with semisubmersible
platform under regular waves. A dynamic mooring model is coupled with the CFD code to accurately
simulate the mooring system. The surge, heave and pitch RAOs at wave frequency and double wave
frequency, mean surge offset and zero frequency surge QTF of the semi-submersible platform are investigated.
The numerical uncertainties of the above metrics are quantified based on three sources - statistical, iterative and
discretization uncertainty. Amongst them, the discretization uncertainty is identified as the dominant source of
numerical uncertainty. The validation uncertainty is finally estimated combining the numerical, input and
experimental uncertainties. Most of the metrics have achieved the validation against the experimental measurement
within the validation uncertainty except for the mean surge offset and zero frequency surge QTF. The
utilization of the coupled CFD-FEM code is proved to be accurate for simulations of FOWT under regular waves.
Guidelines for best-practices of the procedure for verification and validation study of CFD simulations of floating
structures under regular waves are also given.

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