A Preliminary Reliability Analysis of Offshore Wind Turbine Structure Design in Typhoon-prone Areas

  Introduction  Guangdong province is a typhoon-prone area, but neither the international offshore wind engineering design standards nor the Chinese design codes which to be issued consider the influence of typhoon. The objective reliability index (failure probability) remains unknown. Moreover, the partial safety factors (PSFs) for different loads in Chinese design codes are different, which will be an obstacle for the integrated design of offshore wind turbines.

  Method  In this study, the authors compared the Chinese design codes with the international standards and calculated the objective reliability index of the codes and the corresponding modified PSFs under different coefficients of variance, ratios and correlation coefficients of load effects. And the authors also gave the method to obtain the equivalent unified PSF.

  Result  The results show that using the same PSFs and combination factors, the reliability index will decreases by 0.5~1.0 when the coefficient of variation of loads increases from 0.2 to 0.6.

  Conclusion  The authors suggests the reliability index of 3.2 and the PSFs and combination factor are determined by the site condition.