Offshore wind turbines and wind load calculation - Sesam for offshore wind turbine support structures

Supporting the development of fixed and floating wind farm structures

Design and analysis of fixed offshore wind turbine (OWT) structures

Sesam provides a tailor-made solution for structural strength analysis of fixed offshore wind turbine structures. It can be used for conceptual and detailed design of the primary structure, as well as for design of secondary steel such as boat landings and J-tubes. Besides this, Sesam can perform other lifecycle analysis such as transportation and lifting.

Supporting leading Standards for design of fixed offshore wind turbine structures

Sesam's software for offshore wind turbines is based on decades of experience in engineering analysis of steel offshore structures
The software is applicable for analyses of wind turbine structures and supporting major rules and standards, such as IEC61400-3, DNV-OS-J101 and DNVGL-RP-0005 (DNV-RP-C203)
Interactive 3D modeller supporting combined beam and shell models of offshore wind turbine structures
Use for any complexity of structure, from monopiles and tripods to jacket structures

Combined effect of wind and hydrodynamic loads

In offshore wind turbine support structure design, engineers need a solution for structural strength analysis that can account for the combined effect of wind loads and hydrodynamic loads on structures. Sesam is tailor-made to address the challenges in wind turbine support structure design – one complete system covering all aspects of fixed OWT installations.

Software for design and analysis of fixed OWT structures

Powerful parametric modelling and scripting possibilities
Easy import of models from other systems such as SACS, Ansys, Staad, Nastran and others
Automatic linearization of pile-soil springs and natural frequency analysis
Fatigue analysis of damage equivalent loads as well as time domain loads based on IEC61400-3, DNV-OS-J101 and DNVGL-RP-0005 (DNV-RP-C203)
Ultimate strength analysis of simplified extreme loads, time domain loads and earthquake loads, based on API, AISC, Eurocode, ISO and Norsok
Sequential analysis using wind turbine loads from any 3rd party tool, such as Bladed, HawC, Flex, BHawC and others
Libraries of SN curves and automatic computation of stress concentration factors (SCFs)
Post-processing of integrated design results for ULS and fatigue from Bladed
10x faster analysis using Sesam Cloud, enabling further optimization and cost reduction

Our integrated solution is based on the Sesam modules GeniE (for modelling and ULS checks); Wajac (for generation of time domain wave loads), Splice (for non-linear foundation analysis); Sestra (for static and time domain dynamic analysis); and Framework (for fatigue summation based on rainflow counting). All the modules are executed from a user-friendly graphical interface (Fatigue Manager) which also combines the times series wave and wind loads.

Design and analysis of floating offshore wind turbine (OWT) structures

Sesam also provides state of the art numerical tools for coupled/integrated simulations of floating offshore wind turbines through the module Sima (Advanced Analyses of Marine Operations and Floating Systems). The tool is well suited for the complicated coupled simulations involved.

The aerodynamics considering aero-hydro-servo-elastic formulation has been developed and implemented gradually during the past decade to make it possible for enhanced coupled analysis with hydrodynamic loads and motions of floaters (module Simo) and structure response in the mooring system (module Riflex) to complete the nonlinear time domain dynamic simulation of floating offshore wind turbine structures.