Design of a 6-DoF Robotic Platform for Wind Tunnel Tests of Floating Wind Turbines

Sophisticated computational aero-hydro-elastic tools are being developed for simulating the dynamics of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs). The reliabilty of such prediction tools for designers requires experimental validation. To this end, due to the lack of a large amount of full scale data available, scale tests represent a remarkable tool. Moreover, due to the combined aerodynamic and hydrodynamic contributions to the dynamics of FOWTs, experimental tests should take into account both. This paper presents the design process of a 6-Degrees-of-Freedom robot for simulating the dynamics of FOWTs in wind tunnel scale experiments, as a complementary approach with respect to ocean wind-wave basin scale tests. Extreme events were considered for the definition of the robot requirements and performance. A general overview on the possible design solutions is reported, then the machine architecture as well as the kinematic and dynamic analysis is discussed. Also a motion task related to a 5-MW Floating Offshore Wind Turbine nominal operating condition was considered and then the ability of the robot to reproduce such motions verified in terms of maximum displacements, forces and power, to be within the design boundaries. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).