First Steps towards Sustainable-by-Design Anchoring Systems for Floating Offshore Wind

This paper marks the first steps in the project putting forward economic, environmental, and technological key performance indicators to assist the selection of anchoring systems. Scenarios in terms of location, soil profile, and floater are defined. Anchor loading histories are obtained through coupled load simulations and used to design typical anchors. Key performance indicators describing three sustainability aspects – economic, environmental, and technological – are proposed to assess the industrial feasibility of each anchoring systems. The result of the study is twofold. On the one hand, sustainability key performance indicators that can guide the selection of anchoring technologies for future floating offshore wind development are proposed. On the other hand, a guidance to the most promising anchoring systems for further development via experimental testing and numerical modelling within the TAILWIND project is provided