Structural Design of a Floating Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbine in Red Sea

WindFloat concept is a recent innovation that appears beside the main categories of offshore wind turbine. The structur-al design of such structure is not explicitly given in the classification societies rules. This paper gives a methodology to calculate the scantlings of thefloating foundation of the WindFloat using a combination of the available guidelines and rules for wind turbines. A computer program has been developed to calculate the scantlings of the floating foundation according to DNV rules taking into account the hydrostatic pressure only. A 3D Finite Element Analysis is performed for two loading conditions to check the adequacy of the calculated scantlings taking into account allenvironmental loads in the Red Sea, axial force and tower weight.Environmental loads: wave, wind, current and sea level are calculated by using a developed program. To check the significance of the environmental loads in Red Sea, Finite Element Analysis is repeated for each load individually. The results showed that the hydrostatic pressure gives the highest stresses on the columns which justifies why it is the only load considered in the DNV rules.The results obtained for both loading con-ditions considered have been used to identify the critical areas in the column supporting the tower, and hence determine the structural enhancement required to avoid any undesirable response.