Rules OWT
Rules OWT
Rules OWT
ABSTRACT: Certification is an integral part to secure safety and reliability for offshore wind farms. Therefore state of the art certification guidelines are of vital importane. Within the EU-research projects Opti Pile and RECOFF existing guidelines were reviewed and modified where necessary. The results led to completely revised GL Wind guidelines for the certification of offshore wind turbines, which will be issued in parallel to the present paper. A comparison of the new GL Wind offshore guideline with other standards is given. Special focus is layed on comparison of general scope of guidelines and presentation of the new GL Wind offshore guideline concerning its safety philosophy, load assumptions, structures and Condition Monitoring Systems. Keywords: Offshore Wind Turbines, Certification, Guidelines, Loads, Structures, Fatigue Strength, Condition Monitoring System The IEC 61400-3 specifies essential design requirements to ensure the engineering integrity of offshore wind turbines. Its purpose is to provide an appropriate level of protection against damage from all hazards during the planned lifetime. This standard will be one out of a set of standards under the IEC 61400 regime dealing with Safety and measurement of wind turbines. The IEC 61400-3 should be used in conjunction with the appropriate IEC/ISO standards. In particular, this standard is fully consistent with but not duplicating the requirements of IEC 61400-1 [2]. IEC 61400-1 is one of the internationally acknowledged standards for the safety of (onshore) wind turbines. Emphasis is given to the determination of load assumptions within the IEC 61400-3. Details concerning site assessment and load assumptions can be found. Aspects concerning materials, structures, machinery components and systems (safety system, electrical system) are not covered or are only briefly handled. For this the IEC 61400-3 gives the following statement: When determining the structural integrity of elements of a wind turbine, national or international design codes for the relevant material may be employed. Special care shall be taken when partial safety factors from national or international design codes are used together with partial safety factors from this standard. It shall be ensured that the resulting safety level is not less than the intended safety level in this standard. Concluding, the IEC 61400-3 defines load assumptions and a safety level, but relys on application of national or international design codes for determination of the structural integrity as well as for machinery, blades, safety and electrical system.
1.I NTRODUCTION
Certification of wind turbines has a history of almost twenty five years. It has been applied differently in scope, requirements and depth in the beginning in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands only. These three countries are still leading in the development and application of certification rules but during recent years a number of other countries as well as many banks realised the necessity of a thorough evaluation and certification of wind turbines and their proposed installation. Among these countries are China, Greece, India, Spain, Sweden and USA. Germanischer Lloyd (GL) has been active in the field since the late seventies. Technical fundamentals were established by Garrad Hassan and Germanischer Lloyd within a EU-funded project in the early 90s. As a result Germanischer Lloyd issued the first rules for the certification of wind turbines in 1995. These incorporated GLs expertise in wind energy and in offshore oil and gas. Meanwhile GLs 1995 rules have undergone its second revision and the latest edition is issued in parallel to the present paper. Further standards and recommendations have been developed in Denmark. An international IEC standard is currently under development.
Loads
Support Structure P
Machinery
P P P P P P
P P P
P
P
IEC WT01 (onshore) P Table 1: Comparison of Scope for standards/guidelines in the field of offshore wind energy (
P= subject is dealt with, P = subject is partly dealt with or reference on other standard)
turbine to be monitored on a random sample basis, see section 3.1.7.
2.4 DNV-OS-J101
Det Norske Veritas (DNV) has issued its first standard for the design of offshore wind turbines structures in 2004 [9]. Self explanatory is that this standard does only cover the (support) structure of the wind turbine and not the entire system to be considered within a certification.
This standard is not related to offshore wind turbines and it does not give any design requirements. The only purpose of IEC WT01 is to define the basic elements and prodecures of a certification. Even though WT01 was not intended to be applied for offshore wind farms, its definition for project certification is sometimes applied for offshore wind farms. This is due to the fact, that on one hand no other standards were existent for the definition of offshore project certification. On the other hand WT01 offers an easy going project certificate, where any third party surveillance is optional. For comparison the GL Wind Offshore guideline provides the A-B-Level-concept for project certification, see section 2.2, which means that a minimum of 25% (Level B) of the wind turbines within a wind farm are to be monitored by third party surveillance. Project certification without third party surveillance during manufacturing, transport, installation and commissioning cannot reveal problems or failures occurring during these processes. The value of the project certificate then is limited to the assessment of the design documentation. Since experience with wind turbines shows that e.g. manufacturing problems occur from time to time, waiving of third party surveillance is not understandable. Repair of failures after installation, not detected during manufacturing, is a very cost and time intensive work. And secondary it leads to a bad reputation for the wind energy. Concluding the IEC WT01 is an international standard in defining rules and procedures for the scope of type and project certification. It was not intended to be applied for the certification of offshore wind farms and thus modifications are necessary. The GL Wind offshore guideline take into account the benefits of WT01 project certification and additional surveillance for offshore wind turbines. In the near future the IEC WT01 will be modified for the purpose of offshore wind farm certification.
certification of offshore wind farms, the participation in research projects and expert groups, the project management and operation of the FINO 1 research platform and comments from the Wind Energy Committee led to a substantial improvement of the Guideline. For those topics, which are not specific to offshore conditions, but specific to the design of wind turbines, reference is made to the Guideline for the Certification of Wind Turbines, [4] and the Guideline for the Certification of Condition Monitoring Systems, [5]. When carrying out Type Certification, the overall concept of the offshore wind turbine is assessed. The certification covers all components and elements of the offshore wind turbine, i.e. safety as well as design, construction, workmanship and quality are checked, assessed and certified. Prototype Testing, examination of the Implementation of the design requirements in production and erection and check of quality management system are to be performed after the Design Assessment and build the final steps of Type Certification. When carrying out Project Certification, conformity is assessed and certified that type-certified offshore wind turbines and particular support structure designs meet requirements governed by site-specific external conditions, local codes and other requirements relevant to the site. Within Project Certification the individual offshore wind turbines / wind farms are monitored during manufacturing, transport, installation and commissioning. Periodic Monitoring is carried out in regular intervals.
These site conditions will be assessed for plausibility, quality and completeness of measurement reports and accreditation of measurement bodies or institutes establishing reports about the external conditions.
Marine conditions (bathymetry, waves, tides, correlation of wind and waves, sea-ice, scour, marine growth, etc.) Soil conditions Site and wind farm configuration
Other environmental conditions, such as: salt content of the air, temperature, ice and snow, humidity, lightning strike, solar radiation, etc. Electrical grid conditions
tower
platform WL
sub-structure pile
sub-structure
foundation
inspection of the job schedules (e.g. for welding, installation, grouting, bolting up) inspection of prefabricated subassemblies, and of components to be installed, for adequate quality of manufacture, insofar as this has not been done at the manufacturers works surveillance of important steps in the installation on a random-sampling basis (e.g. pile driving, grouting) inspection of grouted and bolted connections, surveillance of non-destructive tests inspection of the corrosion protection inspection of scour protection system inspection of the electrical installation (run of cables, equipment earths and earthing system) inspection of sea fastening and marine operations
functioning of the yaw system behaviour at loss of load behaviour at overspeed functioning of automatic operation visual inspection of the entire offshore wind turbine checking the logic of the control systems indicators.
In additions to the tests the following items shall be examined during commissioning surveillance: General appearance Corrosion protection Damages Conformity of the main components with the certified design and traceability / numeration of the same.
all parts of the drive train rotor blades hydraulic/pneumatic system safety and control systems electrical installation
Even though some major differences can be found between IEC 61400-3 and the GL-Guideline: While the IEC 61400-3 is based on the 3rd Edition of the IEC 61400-1, the GL Wind Guideline is harmonised with the GL Wind Guideline for onshore wind turbines and the 2nd edition of the IEC 61400-1. This find its way trough the definition of the external conditions (characteristic vs. mean turbulence intensity) as well as the load case definitions (extrapolation of extreme operating loads or deterministic load cases). A comparison of the governing wind conditions according to the GL Wind Guideline and the IEC 61400-3 can be found in tables 2 and 3. It has to be stated that both allow for a type certification of the machinery of the turbine (rotor and nacelle) while site specific design shall be used for the support structure.
II
III
Table 2: Definition of the Type classes according to draft IEC 61400-3 [1] Wind Turbine Class Vref Vave A [m/s] [m/s] I 15 a B I 15 a C I 15 a
I 50 10
3.2 Loads
Loading of an offshore wind turbine represents a major point in all related standards and Guidelines. The installation of the structure in shallow waters and its dynamic nature imply several difficulties in their development. The development of all standards and Guidelines was performed in parallel and in close cooperation. The results from EU funded projects as RECOFF, OWTES and Opti-pile were used in the development. Many similarities between the IEC 61400-3 draft and the GL Wind Guideline can be found. This is no wonder, since GL Wind participatet in WG3 of the IEC TC88, as well as members of the WG 3 reviewed the GL Wind Guideline.
In the GL Wind Guideline as well as in the IEC a new turbulence class C dedicated to offshore conditions is included. The differences in the wind speed turbulence intensity definition are not so extreme as the values in the tables impose. Figure 3 shows the the variation of the turbulence intensity over mean wind speed. The description of the marine conditions is based on the standard approach used for the offshore oil and gas industry. Special problems arise when analysis is
Site Specific
50
42.5
37.5
performed in the time domain for shallow waters. In these cases it is essential to consider the influence of the shallow water and bottom inclination to the wave field and its distribution. The short term wave distribution is distorted and the maxima distribution is not a Rayleigh one as it is in deep water conditions. The Guideline includes the option to use modified (TMA) wave spectra to consider the different frequency content of the waves in stochastic wavefield simulations. The different distribution of the maximum wave elevation can be considered by applying shallow water distribution as the one proposed by Battjes [12]. One major problem in establishing the design environmental conditions for offshore wind turbines is the combination of the external conditions to derive design loads. Contrary to offshore structures where wave loads usually dominate loading, offshore wind turbine support structure may equally be loaded by wind, wave and sea ice forces while currents are of minor importance in 0,30
0,25 0,20 0,15 0,10 0 10 20 I
shallow waters. Preliminary analysis has shown that, in most cases, wind and wave loading are the two main sources of loading. In some areas like the northern Baltic Sea, sea ice loading, combined with extreme wind may be the design driving force. It is generally accepted, that sea ice does not occur in combination with waves, at least in the near shore conditions wind turbines are erected.
Several methods on the combination of external conditions exist, showing a different amount of conservatism and data to be considered. In general the approach: The fewer the information on real conditions is, that higher the conservatism in combination has to be followed in the design of offshore wind turbines. A classification for the extreme event analysis may be seen from the table 4.
30 v [m/s]
40
50
Figure 3: Turbulence intensity according vs. wind speed according to different proposed standards/Guidelines.
Method Add extremes Extremes occur during same storm with 50-year recurrence period Extremes during the same storm have different individual long term probability of occurrence
Example 50-year gust + 50-year design wave 50-year gust + reduced design wave reduced gust + 50-year design wave 50-year gust + 10-year design wave 10-year gust + 50-year design wave Mean wind speed and sea state with a combined probability of 50-years are derived, theoretical assumption for individual extremes during the storms corresponds to: n1-year gust + n2-year design wave, ni-year gust + nj-year design wave Extreme values are combined according to their existing joint probability of occurrence The extremes are analysed as a function of the number of storms
Simple
Conservative*
Simple
Site specific
Accurate***
Realistic ***
Very high
Best fit
Realistic
* Usually only the two extreme cases of the joint probability during the storm are considered, which is correct for linear loading. This may lead to some errors if intermediate combinations of higher order loads dominate. In practice this case occurs seldom and the error is small. ** The combination 50-year + 10-year may have to be changed in some sites to avoid over- or non-conservative results. The method is used in the North Sea. *** Provided the short term analysis takes care of shallow water and other site specific events Table 4: Comparison of possible combinations of extreme wind and wave events
In the GL Wind Guideline, as well as in the IEC standard, the assumption that extreme mean wind and extreme sea state occur at the same 50-year storm is made. The short term fluctuations are not correlated. Of course if better knowledge, from measurements exists for the site in question the real conditions shall be applied.
Further, since type certification, without knowledge of any specific site the GL-Guideline gives some simple methods to estimate the wind speed- wave height relation by using the JONSWAP wind generated wave spectrum in conjunction with the TMA filter. This approach is sufficient for type certification, where only the topsides structure is considered, but only seldom for site specific analysis.
A further problem regarding the shallow sites offshore turbines are intended to be installed is that non linear wave kinematics have to be considerd. Unfortunately there is no engineering method widely applied to consider non linear kinematics in stochastic wave fields. To overcome this drawback the Guideline recommends, that both stochastic wind and wave field simulations are performed as well as deterministic analysis is used. The load cases using stochastic model of the environment only consider linear wave kinematics, but result in a proper representation of the systems dynamics. In contrary the load cases with deterministic gusts and periodic waves consider non-linearities correctly but lack dynamic response consideration.
A further problem and improvement of the new Guidelines is the inclusion of the breaking wave influence. The wave and sea bottom conditions leading to wave breaking are defined, indicating the type of wave breaking mechanism. In the Appendix of the Guidelines a method, developed by J. Wienke [ 13] of GL to calculate impact load from breaking waves is given.
3.5 Machinery
Due to the offshore environment, requirements for the marinisation of the machinery components have been added. These are air flow, air filtration, heating/cooling, salt filters, corrosion protection and protection classes and encapsulaton of the nacelle. The calculation procedure for pirch and yaw drives has been enhanced and the material safety factors against tooth root fracture and pitting have been increased. Gear box requirements for a running-in period under partial load have been incorporated.
3.3 Structures
The material safety factors for steel structures are now identical to those of the GL Wind onshore guideline, see table 5.
fail safe
CONCLUSION
Accessible, regular maintenance and surveillance Not Accessible, no maintenance and no surveillance
1.0
1.15
1.25
Existing guidelines and standards were compared in the present paper. The IEC 61400-3 will be available in 2005 as a draft standard and will focus on site assessment, load assumptions and safety factors for offshore wind turbines. In the GL Wind offshore guideline, one can find simliraties to the IEC 61400-3 load and safety philosophy. The GL Wind offshore guideline is the only guideline, which in depth covers all aspects of the structural safety for offshore wind turbines. Where other guidelines cover only loads or loads and structures, the GL Wind offshore guideline moreover provides requirements for structures, machinery, safety and electrical system and condition monitoring systems.
Table 5: Partial material safety factors for fatigue strength The soil investigation programme is to be performed in accordance to the BSH standard [11]. For horizontally loaded piles the vertical tangent criteria has been introduced, which means that the pile should remain vertical in at least one position under extreme loads. This requirement replaces the zero toe kick criteria. New requirements have been added for grouted joints under bending load.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Part of the investigations described in this paper were investigated within the EU-funded research projects Opti Pile and RECOFF.
REFERENCES
IEC.: Wind Turbine Generator Systems part 3: Safety requirements for offshore wind turbines, IEC 61400-3, Ninth version of working draft, May (2004) [2] IEC.: Wind Turbine Generator Systems part 1: Safety requirements for wind turbines, IEC 614001, (2004) [3] Germanischer Lloyd Wind Energie GmbH: Guideline for the Certification of Offshore Wind Turbines.Final Draft. Germanischer Lloyd WindEnergie GmbH, November (2004) [4] Germanischer Lloyd Wind Energie GmbH: Guideline for the certification of wind turbines, edition 2003 with supplement (2004) [5] Germanischer Lloyd Wind Energie GmbH: Guideline for the certification of condition monitoring systems for wind turbines, (2003) [6] The Danish Energy Agencys Approval Scheme for Wind Turbines: Recommendation for technical approval of offshore wind turbines. December (2001) [7] The Danish Energy Agencys Approval Scheme for Wind Turbines: Technical Criteria for Type Approval and Certification of Wind Turbines in Denmark(TC), (2000) [8] The Danish Energy Agencys Approval Scheme for Wind Turbines: DS 472, Last og sikkerhed for vindmller (load and safety for wind turbines) [9] Det Norske Veritas: Standard for the design of offshore wind turbine structures DNV-OS-J101, (2004) [10] A. D. Garrad, H. G. Matthies, et. al.: Study of Offshore Wind Energy in the EC, Verlag Natrliche Energie, Brekendorf, Germany, (1995) [11] Bundesamt fr Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie: Standard for Geotechnical Site and Route Surveys, Germany, (2004) [1]
[12] [13]
Battjes, J. A., and Groenendijk, H. W., Wave height distributions on shallow foreshores, J. of Coastal Engineering, Vol. 40 (2000) Wienke, J., Druckschlagbelastung auf schlanke zylindrische Bauwerke durch brechende Wellen theoretische und gromastbliche Laboruntersuchungen, Thesis, TU Braunschweig ,