The hybrid testing method developed by CENER for floating wind turbine scaled tests combining wind and waves (SIL) has been upgraded in order to introduce not only the wind turbine rotor thrust, but also the out-of-plane rotor moments (aerodynamic and gyroscopic). The former ducted-fan has been substituted by a multi-propellers actuator system. The new system has been completely developed, calibrated and used on a test campaign carried out at MARIN's Concept Basin. It was installed on a 1/50 scaled model of the DeepCwind 5MW semisubmersible turbine built by MARIN within the EU MARINET2/Call No.3 under ACTFLOW project framework. The control strategy of the floating turbine was developed by POLIMI and TUDELFT and integrated into the SIL numerical model. The experiment has proved a good behaviour of the enhanced SiL method. It has revealed that the relative importance of gyroscopic moments is low in comparison with the aerodynamic rotor moments in the considered cases. The results also show how rotor moments are particularly important in the floating turbine dynamics in cases with large rotor load imbalances such as situations where one blade fails to pitch.

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In recent years wind-assisted propulsion for commercial ships has gained an increasing interest as valuable alternative to reduce fuel pollutant emissions. However, the development of feasible and commercially viable wind propulsion systems to partially (or fully) propel a ship is nowadays hindered by the difficulties of modelling the complicated aerodynamic and hydrodynamic aspects involved. From an aerodynamic point of view, it appears that one of the main challenges of predicting the performance of a wind-assisted ship, is to properly evaluate the interaction effects that occur between the various wind propulsion systems mounted on the deck of the ship. This research deals with the validation of a simple and quick-to-use aerodynamic model that is capable of evaluating such effects, i.e. upwash, downwash and wake, occurring between two generic propulsion systems placed at any given relative position on the ship's deck. The wind propulsion systems might assume any given angle of attack; the flow can be attached as well as separated. Such aerodynamic model, that was first presented in [1], consists of the horseshoe vortex method modified with semi-empirical formulas to take into account the effects of viscosity. First, the results provided by the aerodynamic model were compared with results obtained by using more sophisticated tools, i.e. a CFD body force model and RANS CFD. Then, experimental validation was carried out by means of dedicated wind-tunnel tests. It can be concluded that, despite the simplicity of the aerodynamic model employed, it proved to give reasonable results when compared to more sophisticated tools and to experimental data. REFERENCES [1] K. Roncin and J.M. Kobus, “Dynamic simulation of two sailing boats in match racing”, Sports Engineering , Vol. 7, pp. 139-152, (2004).@en