Bilateral wind flow interactions with floating offshore wind turbines

Project Description:

This project is offered through the EPSRC CDT in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience and EDF UK R&D. The CDT is a partnership between Hull, Durham, Loughborough and Sheffield universities, along with over 40 industry partners. We will welcome over 65 funded doctoral researchers between 2024 and 2028. Join us to tackle some of the biggest research challenges, in a supportive environment where you can grow your own career while you help grow the offshore wind industry.

Project Background:

This research project proposal specifically targets floating offshore wind energy, which is a developing market. As such, there are challenges and hurdles to overcome and uncertainties to deal with before widespread commercialisation and technological diffusion is realised. Conversely, this means there are plenty of opportunities for researchers and innovators to positively impact the growth trajectory of floating offshore wind.

Unlike fixed-bottom turbines, floating wind turbines are free to move along all 6 degrees of freedom (x, y, z translations, and roll, pitch, yaw rotations). This freedom of movement adds uncertainty when describing and modelling interactions between wind flows and turbines. Examples of wind energy applications known or expected to be affected by this added uncertainty include:

• Power performance testing/power curve validation
• Energy yield analysis
• Forecasting of power output
• Modelling of turbine wakes
• Modelling of induction zone and blockage effects
• Farm-farm flow interactions and cluster wakes.

Outputs of the above activities are subsequently subject to greater uncertainty, or contain more known and unknown errors and biases, relative to like exercises performed within fixed-bottom offshore wind. These uncertainties, errors and biases add cost, negatively affecting the competitiveness and viability of floating offshore wind technology.

This project represents an opportunity for novel research contributions to be made towards solving a problem set tangibly affecting the floating wind market today, with real potential for advancing the state of the art and for helping to shape industry consensus on modelling and describing wind flow interactions with floating wind turbines. The ask is for the research engineer to engage with as many affected wind energy applications as is practical and realistic, and to work towards identifying, quantifying and reducing uncertainties in the analytical outputs driven by controlled and uncontrolled motion of floating wind turbines.

The project scope and ambition are to be discussed and agreed with the successful student candidate. The focus could be on just one application, for example modelling of floating wind turbine wakes, or extended to gauging motion impacts on two or three applications. Possible applications cover a range of spatial and temporal scales and research areas, providing the student much choice amongst the software and modelling tools with which to conduct the research project. From a project planning perspective, it will therefore be important to strike the right balance between ambition and practicality.

Project objectives:

• Build in-depth knowledge and understanding of the ways in which wind flows interact bilaterally with floating offshore wind turbines. This could, for example, cover upstream, lateral and downstream flow-turbine interactions, across different floating wind farm configurations including a standalone turbine, pairs of turbines, single row of turbines, multiple rows of turbines up to clusters of wind farms.
• Recognition of the two-way (bilateral) nature of flow-FOWT interactions through consideration of the structural response of floating wind turbines to aerodynamic loadings. To consider secondary, knock-on effects of turbine responses and resultant flow perturbations on flow-structure interactions occurring at neighbouring turbines and turbines deeper within the array. To develop the expertise required to capture and represent these effects within models and methods.
• Conduct research on existing methods and models for describing two-way interactions between wind flow and floating turbines and build an excellent awareness of the literature available on the subject. To stay up to date with literature as the research project progresses.
• Participation within joint industry projects and to collaborative academic and cross-industrial research groups.
• To develop solutions for identifying, quantifying and/or reducing uncertainties in the outputs of selected wind energy analytical exercises (see example bulleted list in the above section) linked with motion of the floating offshore wind turbine.
• To build, develop and test methods and models using programming and software tools.
• Engage and liaise with experts across EDF group to further build on and refine knowledge and understanding.
• Engage with stakeholders and potential end users of research outputs within EDF Renewables business entities to ensure results have industry relevance.

Training and development

With the CDT, you will benefit from a taught programme, giving you a broad understanding of the breadth and depth of current and emerging offshore wind sector needs. This begins with an intensive six-month programme for the new student intake, drawing on the expertise and facilities of all four academic partners. It is supplemented by Continuing Professional Development (CPD), which is embedded throughout your 4-year research scholarship. 

Depending on prior experience, you will be trained to use numerical packages (e.g., Matlab and Python). Further project-specific training will be defined when developing your training and self-development plan. The student will also have access to training courses and programmes provided by EDF which cover a diverse range of technical and soft skills. 

EDF R&D has wide ranging expertise on fluid-structure modelling and interactions spanning numerous departments across group level, including France (approx. 2000 researchers). There will be opportunities to connect and collaborate with group experts and knowledgeable persons from across the business who can offer technical guidance and direction, representing an additional rich source of support beyond that to be provided by the industrial supervisor. There could be also chance for the research engineer to spend time in different R&D departments (national and international) if there is interest from the student.

Entry Requirements

If you have received or expect to achieve before starting your PhD programme a First-class Honours degree, or a 2:1 Honours degree and a Masters, or a Distinction at Masters level degree (or the international equivalents) in Engineering, Environmental Science, Mathematics and Statistics, or Physics, we would like to hear from you.

If your first language is not English, or you require Tier 4 student visa to study, you will be required to provide evidence of your English language proficiency level that meets the requirements of the Aura CDT’s academic partners. This course requires academic IELTS 7.0 overall, with no less than 6.0 in each skill.

If you have any queries about this project, please contact Prof Simon Hogg, simon.hogg@durham.ac.uk or Dr Majid Bastankhah, majid.bastankhah@durham.ac.uk.

You may also address queries about the CDT to auracdt@hull.ac.uk.

Watch our short video to hear from Aura CDT students, academics and industry partners:

Funding

The CDT is funded by the EPSRC , allowing us to provide scholarships that cover fees plus a stipend set at the UKRI nationally agreed rates. These are currently circa £19,795 per annum at 2025/26 rates and will increase in line with the EPSRC guidelines for the subsequent years (subject to progress).

Eligibility

Research Council funding for postgraduate research has residence requirements. Our CDT scholarships are available to Home (UK) Students. To be considered a Home student, and therefore eligible for a full award, a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the scholarship (with some further constraint regarding residence for education). For full eligibility information, please refer to the EPSRC website.

We also allocate a number of scholarships for International Students per cohort.