Alessandro Bianchini is Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Florence (Italy), where he holds the courses on “Wind and marine engineering” and “Advanced Renewable Energy Conversion”. Prof. Bianchini currently serves as the vice-president of the European Academy of Wind energy (EAWE) and Associated Editor of the prestigious Wind Energy Science Journal.
In the field of wind energy, he has authored so far more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, including the authorship of two of the ten studies in the “Grand Challenges Paper Series” promoted by the International Energy Agency.
His main research fields are wind turbine aerodynamics and design/simulation of wind turbines and farms with multi-fidelity approaches, from engineering methods to high-computing Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Keynote: Key challenges in the simulation of next-generation floating offshore wind turbines

Abstract:

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) will undoubtedly play a key role in the future EU energy mix, as they are able to tap into the huge wind energy potential in deep waters. Floating offshore wind is anyhow a relatively new technology, with only few commercial wind farms are currently in operation, and many concepts still in the stage of demonstration projects. As a result, scientific research is flourishing on the topic; however, it is acknowledged that some unknowns are still present, especially regarding the possible interaction of the turbine with its own wake during the floating motion, the multi-physics interaction of stochastic loading of wind and waves with their aero-hydro-servo-elastic characteristics, and the unprecedented inflow condition seen at the top of the giant machines of 15+ MW currently under design.

Improved modeling and analysis approaches are therefore needed, which must not only have higher-fidelity, but also incorporate more physics and capture coupled integrated systems in a holistic way. The keynote will give an overview of some of these challenges and highlight potential developments to tackle them.