Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Development and Verification of Data Exchange System for Real-time Hybrid Model Test of Offshore
Wind Turbines
Jie FuDeepwater Engineering Research Center, Dalian University of Technology,Dalian, Liaoning, China
Yiming Zhou*
Huaneng Clean Energy Research InstituteBeijing, China
Wei Shi
Deepwater Engineering Research Center, State Key Laboratory of Coast and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology,Dalian, Liaoning, China
Xin Li
Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Coast and Offshore Engineering,
Dalian University of Technology,Dalian, Liaoning, China
Xiaojing Lv
Huaneng Clean Energy Research InstituteBeijing, China

KEY WORDS: Offshore wind turbine; real-time hybrid model test;
data exchange; numerical substructure; physical substructure.

ABSTRACTDue to the huge energy production potential, offshore wind technologies
have been developed rapidly in recent years. Offshore wind turbinesoften require physical model tests for performance evaluation and design
verification. The real-time hybrid model test of offshore wind turbines isbased on the sub-structure analysis principle of structural dynamics. The
model tests and numerical calculations are coupled in real time to solve
the scaling conflict that is difficult to achieve in traditional offshore windturbine model tests. Since real-time interaction is necessary during thetest process, it poses challenges to the solution of numerical substructures, loading of loader and data exchange between sub-structures.
The present study aims to solve the key issue of data exchange between
the numerical module and physical module. A UDP/IP communication
mechanism was developed to exchange the information between
numerical module in AeroDyn and physical test to replace the traditional
TCP/IP system. With the UDP/IP the host can communicate directly withthe controller which significantly reduces the time consumption during
the process of data acquisition and transmission. The developed dataexchange system was verified against a model test with a 1:90 scaled
NREL 5 MW wind turbine supported by the monopile. This systemprovides a technical reference for the further development of real time
hybrid model test of offshore wind turbine.

INTRODUCTION
With the aggravation of the global greenhouse effect, offshore windpower, as a new field of clean energy, has great energy production
potential and is widely supported and developed in many countries
around the world (Lv et al.,2017; Esteban et al.,2011; Musial et al.,2016;
Ren et al.,2021; Wang et al.,2022). In order to make better use of highquality wind resources at the sea, the energy capacity and the hub heightof offshore wind turbine are constantly increasing, and the whole windturbine structure tends to be in large-scale. At the same time, due to thelimitation of the available offshore space and the superiority of deep-sea
wind power, offshore wind turbines have been developed from fixedoffshore to floating offshore (Perveen et al.,2014). The development of
the whole offshore wind power has continuously moved from offshore
to deep-sea, which will lead to a more complex and extreme marineenvironment. In order to better ensure the structural integrity andoperational safety of offshore wind turbines during their service life, it isnecessary to strengthen the research on the structural performance andcoupling mechanism of offshore wind turbines in the complex marine
environment.

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