Short-Crested Wave-Current Forces on Composite Bucket Foundation for an Offshore Wind Turbine

An analytical solution for the diffraction of short-crested incident wave with uniform current on a composite bucket foundation is derived. The influences of the uniform current on wave frequency, wave run-up, wave force, and inertia and drag coefficients on the composite bucket foundation are investigated. The numerical results indicate that the current incident angle and current velocity have significant effects on the short-crested wave run-up, wave force, and inertia and drag coefficients on the composite bucket foundation. For a fixed wave number, the wave frequency, wave run-up, wave forces, and inertia and drag coefficients obviously increase with the increase of current velocity when the relative angle between the current velocity and wave propagation direction is smaller than 90°, whereas they obviously decrease when the relative angle is larger than 90°. It also can be found that the effect of wave-current interaction on the short-crested wave increases with the increase of the total wave number and the decrease of the water depth. The short-crested wave forces will be significantly increased when the current incident angle parallels to the direction of the wave propagating. Therefore, the short-crested wave-current load should be carefully considered in the design of the composite bucket foundation for an offshore wind turbine.