Developing active suction anchors for floating renewable energy converters

Developing active suction anchors for floating renewable energy converters

Supervisors

• Shiaohuey Chow
  Research Fellow, Oceans Graduate School
• Nicole Fiumana
  PhD Candidate, Oceans Graduate School
• Christophe Gaudin
  Head of School, Oceans Graduate School

Students

• Candy Chin,
• Kung Yan Toong

Project Description

Floating renewable energy devices, such as wind turbines or wave energy converters, are anchored to the seabed to remain in position, through taut leg or catenary mooring lines attached to the foundation. The nature of the wave loading results in the foundation having to resists extreme loads that are significantly higher than operating loads. The project will focus on the investigation of the behaviour of suction caissons under extreme events, proposing to temporary increase the anchor capacity by means of the application of active suction. The active suction anchor concept will be investigated using field anchor trials in the Swan River through the RiverLab. This project will build upon an existing Riverlab project on wave energy.  The Swan River will be utilised as a model wave basin, where field tests of the complete system (active suction anchor + mooring + floating buoy) will be performed. The scopes of the project will include design and implementation of the active suction system onto an existing model suction caisson, field installation and monitoring of the in-service performance of the active suction caisson under environmental loading at Jojo’s Jetty.

Impact

Designing foundations to resist extreme loads is cost prohibitive for the renewable energy industry. The possibility of temporary develop an additional capacity throughout the application of active suction would represent an alternative concept for reducing the design load, thus leading to more economical design solutions of the anchoring system.