PhD - ICAM - Analytical Modelling of ship collisions against FOWT

at ICAM Nantes
Published on October 31, 2024

Context

To achieve a global transition to renewable energies, offshore wind energy is a promising alternative, but its large-scale deployment poses several challenges. Recently, several collision cases between ships and offshore wind turbines have been reported and, as offshore wind farming expands, the likelihood of collisions between ships and floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) is expected to increase. The consequences of such collisions can be significant: perforation of the ship’s tanks resulting in pollution or even an explosion in the case of a methane tanker or a hydrogen-propelled ship, damage to impacted wind turbines up to the collapse of the tower, rupture of the anchoring lines leading to the drift of the platform and a collision with other wind turbines in the park.

PhD thesis framework

The plan to achieve the above objectives is organized as follows:
Step 1: Analysis of literature related to existing analytical, numerical and experimental works that involve ship collisions against offshore wind turbines.
Step 2: Set-up of LS-Dyna models based on the Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian approach to analyze the influence of both the deformability of the striking ship and the hydrodynamic forces induced by the bow wave.
Step 3: Development of a new SE solver to quickly assess the ship’s deformation in case of head-on and side-way impacts and coupling with existing FOWT SE solvers.
Step 4: Extension of the existing “fluid” solver MCOL by integrating the action of hydro-dynamic forces induced by the bow wave.
Step 5: Validation of the coupled MCOL-SE solver by comparison with LS-Dyna results.
Step 6: Publication of the results in peer-reviewed international journals and redaction of a PhD
dissertation.

Location and Supervision
This work will be carried out at ICAM School of Engineering, Nantes campus, France.

Supervision will be provided by:
Hervé LE SOURNE – ICAM / GeM laboratory
Ye Pyae SONE OO – ICAM / GeM laboratory

The PhD diploma will be delivered by Nantes University – Ecole Centrale de Nantes.

Job application
Applications (CV, cover letter and master's transcript) must be sent to the supervisor team before end of November 2024.

Start-up / Salary : December 2024 / Annual salary: € 33 700