MIE Students Bring Floating Wind Innovation from Amherst to France
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The annual Spring Senior Design Showcase was held on May 6th, 2024 by UMass Amherst's Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department (MIE). The event was the conclusion of MIE’s capstone design course, in which students apply their engineering education to solve real-world problems and present their results in the form of designs, models, and prototypes.
One of the student projects was “Floating Wind Challenge,” consisting of Leo Narbonne, Trent Blatz, Isabella Lambros, Jadyn Fletcher, and Dina Hertog-Raz. Their mission was to design and fabricate a moored floating structure capable of supporting and stabilizing a Vevor 400W wind turbine while withstanding wind, waves, currents, and wear caused by an ocean environment.
Offshore wind offers several benefits as compared to onshore wind, including access to higher and more consistent wind speeds and the ability to build larger turbines with fewer spatial constraints. In addition, floating structures can be installed in water depths greater than fixed-bottom structures. However, this growing field continues to face challenges related to mooring, installation, and operation.
As the team explained: “During our process we were inspired by existing structures to design a floating structure which is buoyed at all three corners with the turbine at the center via a pyramid... The shape and size of the base was carefully considered to balance stability and transportability. For stationkeeping, the structure was connected to anchors with catenary chain mooring lines.”
The team consulted with Katherine Coughlan, a PhD candidate in the UMass Amherst Wind Energy Center who focuses on mooring solutions for floating offshore wind. As the team explained, "she provided insights into the feasibility of the ideas, helping analyze the practicality and potential drawbacks of the more unconventional designs.
The team tested their structure at Puffer’s Pond in Amherst, as well as at Crane Beach in Ipswich, MA. View a demonstration.
Even after the students graduated this spring, their work on the project continued; they competed in the Floating Wind Competition, at Beach Plage Napoléon in Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône, France, on July 4th. The team raised over $10,000—including $2,400 of support from the MIE Department—so that all five group members could travel to France and participate in the competition together.
Out of the twelve finalist teams who traveled to France from all around the world to compete, the UMass team finished second place in the overall competition, which was judged based on power generation efficiency, structural integrity, foundation stability, transportation and installation, and material and fabrication cost.
After the competition, the team reflected: “Despite the many hours of energy and work we’ve put into this project of the past year, we’ve also thoroughly enjoyed delving into wind energy as a topic and learning to work together as a group. So being able to see this project through to completion and testing it in the actual Mediterranean sea environment was just the cherry on top.”