Anais do Congresso Internacional de Transporte Aquaviário, Construção Naval e Offshore
Anais do 28º Congresso Internacional de Transporte Aquaviário, Construção Naval e Offshore

Since the wind at sea is much more stable and stronger than on land, offshore wind energy plays and will continue to play an important role in the global effort towards independence from fossil fuels. However, the development of this activity in an offshore environment results in more costs with the construction, installation, maintenance and decommissioning of wind turbines. Therefore, it is important to have a solid methodology that can be used to obtain support structures optimized for wind generators. Some articles address a theme similar to that chosen for the present study, such as Negm (2000), where an onshore wind tower is optimized and Thiry (2011) where the tower and foundation of an offshore wind turbine are optimized. However, it was noted that, in these studies, some environmental loads were obtained in a simplified way, for example, without the inclusion of marine currents and with regular waves. In addition, no aspect related to the construction of the wind turbine structure was considered as an object of optimization. Therefore, this article seeks to implement a more complete tool to obtain the loads applied to the structure, as well as a focus on optimizing construction time, in addition to minimizing the structural weight. To present a method of optimization of the tower and substructure of an offshore wind turbine with a monopile foundation, aiming to minimize its mass and welding time. In this sense, an analysis of the loads resulting from the operation of the generator and environmental agents is carried out and the structure is evaluated in terms of criteria related to ultimate strength, deformation and dynamic behavior (modes of vibration). The methodology consists of the integration of tools used to determine environmental loads and welding time, structural analysis and optimization. The result of the proposed study is a method for the optimization of the structure of fixed offshore wind turbines with a monopile foundation.