Some offshore wind turbine (OWT) support structures may fall short of required fatigue life expectations, according to a new Lloyd’s Register (LR) report, which…
Some offshore wind turbine (OWT) support structures may fall short of required fatigue life expectations, according to a new Lloyd’s Register (LR) report, which also pinpointed reliability-based inspection as one of the measures to manage fatigue-driven risks in such structures.
The case study evaluated a North Atlantic offshore wind farm of 60–70 turbines, with the combined 500 - 600 MW capacity.
Offshore wind turbines are typically designed for 25 years of service, using a fatigue design factor of three, implying a minimum required fatigue life of 75 years.
However, the study found that a critical joint in the jacket foundation would reach the end of its fatigue life after just 52 years, falling short of this design requirement.
Instead of redesigning the joint, the study took a reliability-based inspection (RBI) approach to identify and mitigate potential failure through targeted, risk-based maintenance.
The study combined a S-N (Stress vs. Number of cycles) model, to estimate when structural safety drops below acceptable thresholds, with Fracture Mechanics (FM) crack growth analysis, to predict the probability of failure over time and inform inspection intervals.
This approach incorporates inspection results via Probability of Detection (PoD) curves to allow inspection schedules to be dynamically
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