Maritime safety aspects regarding installation and maintenance of offshore wind turbines
The research project addresses safety issues that arise during the deployment of installation and maintenance vessels for offshore wind turbines. The focus is on requirements and issues that may arise during the installation of offshore wind turbines (WTGs) in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. Safety aspects are important when using vessels during installation, operation, maintenance and dismantling of WTGs. These safety aspects may involve different scenarios, although the physical causes are similar. A fundamental exploration of the physical phenomena and the interdisciplinary development of simulation models is crucial to develop powerful technological solutions to safety issues without incurring a disproportionate amount of time and costs.
The aim of the research project is to support industry, national and international organisations in increasing the safety of ships and WTGs. To this end, computational methods are being developed that can simulate the behaviour of ships and WTGs during various operations under real operating conditions. They help to avoid endangering people and damaging the environment.
The research project deals with computer-aided simulations that enable the prediction of possible accident scenarios, sequence of events and consequences of damage. A database of capsizing and sinking incidents will be created to provide test cases and validate numerical methods. The methods developed in the research project can be used to analyse accident scenarios and improve the safety performance of new vessels and WTG designs.
The evaluation of the numerical results will also make it possible to define different categories of preventive and operational measures that can reduce the probability of accidents and their consequences. Preventive measures could change the design characteristics so that a particular problem would not occur and/or would have less serious consequences. Operational measures could reduce the consequences of an accident. These measures can be applied during an accident to reduce the extent of damage and lower the consequences; e.g. evacuation plans are developed in advance for different cases and can be applied depending on the extent of damage.
A special feature of the planned numerical investigations is the simultaneous consideration of the complicated interaction between different phenomena. These include, for example, the change in hydrostatic behaviour of offshore wind turbines during installation, collision with floating units, global failure of the ship's structure due to local damage, flooding in high seas, limited manoeuvrability of service vessels due to damage to steering gear in heavy seas, etc.
The research programme comprises six work packages (WP) for the numerical simulation of the dynamic behaviour of ships and WTGs in safety-critical situations. The following institutes and professors are involved in the project.