A wind tunnel/HIL setup for integrated tests of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

This paper presents the technical issues and methodological aspects concerning hybrid/hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) insides the Politecnico di Milano wind tunnel. The scaling issues faced when performing scale model tests on FOWT are presented and the advantages of the HIL methodology with respect to traditional ocean basin tests are shown. The main aspects of the numerical and physical subsystems of the HIL experimental setup are discussed, focussing on their interaction when investigating the effect of aerodynamic loads on the global response of the floating system.