Objectives of the project

The objectives of this project are to develop and implement advanced models and efficient and reliable numerical structural optimization techniques, to automate the design process and significantly reduce the cost of new support structures. This multi-disciplinary research project addresses several key issues for cost-effective optimal design of entire offshore wind turbine support structures, such as fatigue resistance, transparency to marine loads, mass-producibility, and functionality and robustness of the design. Dealing with all issues simultaneously in structural optimization is today not possible.

The cost reductions are achieved through modularization for mass-production, reduced material usage, and improved life expectancy, and contribute to making offshore wind energy competitive with fossil fuels. The industrial objectives are to make the results part of commercial software and radically change the current design process. We envisage that structural optimization will be the future industrial design tool for novel conceptual and preliminary design of support structures at deep waters.