ABSTRACT
Power cables for floating offshore wind farms are installed freely suspended in the water column and are thus directly exposed to high environmental loads. Even with Cable Protection Systems (CPS) in place, harmful stresses, specifically with respect to fatigue loads, cannot be entirely avoided. Accordingly, the fatigue lifetime needs to be predicted and, if necessary, optimised in advance. This is typically done by time domain simulations of design load cases. However, most simulation tools used consist of comparatively simple structural mechanical models. As a result the stress distribution within the cable is not predicted correctly and does thus not lead to an accurate fatigue lifetime prediction. This paper presents an advanced approach to the modelling of submarine cables. Therefore, stresses are calculated using fully flexible, non-linear time domain simulations based on the floating frame of reference formulation in conjunction with the finite element method. First results of verification load cases are presented.
