Nowadays, much attention is payed to the development of renewable energy
resources. Wind energy plays a major role in this issue. That is why there is a
growing interest for improving the design process of wind turbines at many aspects.
This study deals with offshore wind turbines (OWT) from the reliability aspect.
Estimating the uncertainties, a deeper understanding of behavior of the structure is
obtained. As waves are the dominant load on OWT support structures, this paper
addresses how specific wave characteristics affect the structure. Two structural types of support structures are studied, with the aim to evaluate pros and cons of both.
|