Offshore Wind Turbine Tower Design and Optimization: A Review and AI-Driven Future Directions

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of upscaling offshore wind turbines by focusing on tower design and optimization. It surveys foundational background, tower types, loads, analyses, design processes, monitoring, digital twins, standards, and economics, and reviews a broad set of optimization studies with emphasis on tower and foundation design. It then outlines AI-driven future directions, including datasets, surrogate models, multiphysics simulations, digital twins, generative AI, and manufacturing innovations, to enable efficient, scalable, and sustainable tower designs. The work highlights how AI-enabled approaches can reduce mass and cost, improve reliability, and accelerate design iterations, ultimately contributing to lower LCoE and expanding offshore wind deployment. By articulating concrete AI-enabled pathways and referencing established methods (e.g., MDAO/OpenMDAO, PINNs, GNNs, DTs), the paper provides a roadmap for academia and industry to advance tower design for next-generation offshore wind farms.

Abstract

Offshore wind energy leverages the high intensity and consistency of oceanic winds, playing a key role in the transition to renewable energy. As energy demands grow, larger turbines are required to optimize power generation and reduce the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE), which represents the average cost of electricity over a project's lifetime. However, upscaling turbines introduces engineering challenges, particularly in the design of supporting structures, especially towers. These towers must support increased loads while maintaining structural integrity, cost-efficiency, and transportability, making them essential to offshore wind projects' success. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the latest advancements, challenges, and future directions driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the design optimization of Offshore Wind Turbine (OWT) structures, with a focus on towers. It provides an in-depth background on key areas such as design types, load types, analysis methods, design processes, monitoring systems, Digital Twin (DT), software, standards, reference turbines, economic factors, and optimization techniques. Additionally, it includes a state-of-the-art review of optimization studies related to tower design optimization, presenting a detailed examination of turbine, software, loads, optimization method, design variables and constraints, analysis, and findings, motivating future research to refine design approaches for effective turbine upscaling and improved efficiency. Lastly, the paper explores future directions where AI can revolutionize tower design optimization, enabling the development of efficient, scalable, and sustainable structures. By addressing the upscaling challenges and supporting the growth of renewable energy, this work contributes to shaping the future of offshore wind turbine towers and others supporting structures.

Figures (16)

• Figure 1: OWT Design and Optimization: Review and AI-Driven Future Directions. Review: (1) Background on tower and support structure design, load types, analysis methods, isolated and wind-farm tower design processes, monitoring systems, digital twin, software, standards, reference turbines, economic factors, and optimization techniques; (2) Offshore Tower Upscaling, exploring its evolution, future prospects, and its critical role in turbine scaling; (3) Optimization Studies Review, highlighting significant contributions to the design optimization of towers and foundations. AI-Driven Future Directions: dataset generation, surrogate models, multiphysics simulations, digital twins, generative AI, advanced materials and manufacturing, and wind farm design.
• Figure 2: Types of design for wind turbine towers: (a) Lattice, (b) Tubular Steel, (c) Concrete, and (d) Hybrid.
• Figure 3: Types of support structures for wind turbines, Onshore: (a) Concrete Slab; and Offshore: (b) Gravity, (c) Monopile, (d) Suction Bucket, (e) Tripod, (f) Jacket, and (g) Floating.
• Figure 4: Types of support structures for floating offshore wind turbines: (a) Semi-submersible, (b) Spar Buoy, (c) Tension-Leg Platform, and (d) Barge.
• Figure 5: Types of loads on a wind turbine tower: wind loads, aerodynamics loads, hydrodynamic loads, gravitational loads, and in some cases, ice loads and earthquake effects.