Effect of Nacelle Drag on the Performance of a Floating Wind Turbine Platform

Wind forces acting on an offshore wind turbine are transferred to the bottom of the tower and consequently to the floating structure. Thus, drag forces acting on each component of the wind turbine such as the blades, the nacelle, and the tower must be accounted for properly in order to evaluate the performance of the supporting platform. In the aero-elastic wind turbine simulation tool FAST v.7, the nacelle drag component, however, has not been implemented, which means that only the drag forces on the tower and on the blades are represented. In this work, the front and side nacelle drag forces are modelled in FAST v.7 via different drag contributions. This paper will examine the behavior of a floating offshore semisubmersible platform, the WindFloat, for different Rotor-Nacelle-Assembly (RNA) yaw-misalignments with emphasis on the nacelle drag component.