sF    Super Floater

PROJECT DATA

TYPE	ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE STRUCTURAL INNOVATION CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION
LOCATION	DALLAS, TEXAS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CLIENT	TEXAS WIND TOWERS
DATE	2021 —
TEAM	DAVE PIGRAM IAIN MAXWELL
COLLABORATORS	ALTAIR JORDAN POWELL
RENDERS	SUPERMANOEUVRE
AWARDS	BEST INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE: DESIGN FOR DECARBONISATION BUILT DESIGN AWARDS [UK]

Super Floater

Dallas, Texas, United Stated of America

A patented disruptive design for offshore floating wind-turbine platforms with longer lifetimes, better environmental and economic performance and a lower Levelised Cost of Energy [LCOE].  

Floating Offshore Wind Power is a key element of the shift to decarbonized energy production necessary to address the climate crisis.  Key to achieving decarbonization of the energy sector is the cost-competitiveness of renewables measured via the Levelized Cost Of Energy [LCOE].  ‘Super Floater’ is both a design and a design process for Ultra-High Performance Concrete floating wind turbine platforms.  ‘Super Floater’ lowers the LCOE of Floating Offshore Wind Power by enabling floating platforms that cost less to build and maintain; have longer service lives and reduce Capital Expenditure [CAPEX] and exposure to volatile steel markets. The approach may also open the possibility of larger floaters which have generally also resulted in lower LCOE. Additional societal benefits include local employment; reduced transport impacts and lower embodied and operational carbon.

The project’s innovation results from the combination of three main aspects:

01 - The use of Ultra-High Performance Concrete [UHPC] for Floating Offshore Wind Power in combination with 02 and 03 below.

02 - A multi-stage digitally-augmented design process that includes topological optimisation, structural and naval simulation, and fabrication-aware form-finding in tight feedback loops.

03 - A novel fabrication approach for complex doubly-curved branching nodes that in combination with conventionally constructed straight sections has the potential to unlock a commercially viable pathway to construct the forms developed by 02.

Texas Wind Towers, a startup-enterprise pioneering the development of floating wind tower technology, collaborated with supermanoeuvre and Altair, a software and consulting company, to develop an advanced workflow for the design, validation, and optimization of floating wind tower structures via computational design, topological and structural optimization technology and naval architecture software.