Wind-wave hindcasting on offshore wind turbine through coupled atmospheric and spectral models

In the context of numerical analysis of the structural response for an offshore wind turbine an investigation procedure has been set up based on the combined use of a mesoscale atmospheric model (CSUMM) and a spectral wave model (SWAN). After calibrating parameters and testing the accuracy of both models within idealized conditions, they have been adopted for simulating extreme events for a study area in the southern part of the Adriatic Sea in front of the Puglia coast (Italy). Starting from geostrophic wind profiles recorded at the meteorological station of Brindisi, the mesoscale atmospheric model is run to obtain hourly wind velocity components over the computational domain for a two days simulation: these are used to force the wave spectral model for prediction of the sea state. Obtained results show good agreement with wind magnitude and direction recorded at 10m elevation above m.s.l. at the meteorological station for the same event; the characteristics of the simulated wave field (i.e. energy distribution and direction) are consistent with the spatial distribution of the wind forcing: comparison between simulated and observed significant height and period at Monopoli offshore buoy are in progress to obtain validation of the whole analysis procedure. © 2010 ASCE.