JAVELIN ANCHOR ADAPTED FOR FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND

Anchoring and mooring systems are identified as a key area of innovation in the context of recent increasing demand in Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) installations. This paper presents the technology assessment of the JAVELIN Anchor developed by Reflex Marine Ltd for FLOW application in the JAVELIN anchor demonstration program. The deepset JAVELIN Tensile anchor provides a competitive anchoring solution for FLOW installed with low cost work vessel and proven drilling technique. Several design criteria have to be met: i) sufficient strength of the material in ultimate limit state and the fatigue limit state. ii) anchor design to have low installation and capital cost. iii) efficient in various type of geotechnical formation. The strength of the material is analysed in finite element package, namely Ansys. A Tensile Member in Carbon Steel met the design requirement with a diameter 0.2 m for 1000 t application. In addition, the maximum load cases are modeled in hydrodynamic software, namely Orcaflex to simulate the dynamics of the JAVELIN anchor for several sea state, soil resistance and mooring configurations, taking into account the coupled dynamics between wind turbine, floater and mooring systems. For water depths varying from 200 - 400 m, the tension values are lower than the load cases studied in the strength of the material.