Reliability Analysis on One-Step Overall Transportation of Composite Bucket Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbine

Composite bucket foundations, which have been successfully transported, installed, and operated at the Qidong, Xiangshui, and Dafeng offshore wind farms in China, are economically advantageous due to the relatively simple transportation and installation process. The innovative one-step transportation and installation technology of foundation-tower-nacelle is the key phase in saving costs. In this paper, a “foundation lift ship” overall transport mode is proposed and introduced for the first time. Prototype data measurement, preliminary numerical simulation, and theoretical calculations were conducted to investigate whether the foundation-ship integrity, tower hoop stability, and various indexes of the nacelle met the requirements under the influences of various environmental factors. The multi-system coupling motion mechanism and analysis method of this new structure and transportation mode were expounded. Through the prototype observation data of the one-step overall transportation, the ship-foundation system reliability of the structure in the case of large wind and wave was confirmed. Furthermore, it was found that in the one-step overall transportation, the importance of factors to nacelle acceleration decreased in the order of wave height, current speed, and wind speed by the time and frequency domain analysis and data statistics.