INF4INiTY (Integrated designs for future floating offshore wind farm technology) develops nature-inclusive designs for the subsea parts of floating offshore wind farms. Thirteen partners from eight countries work together under the coordination of TU Braunschweig.
Goals
- A nature-inclusive design for gravity anchors and their scour protection.
- An artificial reef structure built into the floating structure of the wind turbine.
- Validation of both designs in large-scale experiments.
- Lower cost of energy and less environmental impact for floating offshore wind.
Wikki’s role
Wikki provides the numerical models for the seabed around the gravity anchors:
- Liquefaction: Wikki leads the work on pore-pressure build-up and seabed liquefaction around the anchors and their scour protection under different sea states and seismic loads. It builds on the open-source liquefaction model developed in NuLIMAS.
- Scour and anchor stability: together with DTU, Wikki develops a combined geotechnical and morphodynamic model in OpenFOAM that predicts scour around the anchors and how far they sink and tilt.
- Open source: the solvers developed in the project are released as open-source software for OpenFOAM.
Funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101136087. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.