Ph.D. Research · Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras

A hexagonal semi-submersible platform for floating offshore wind.

Numerical and experimental study of a novel hexagonal-shaped semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) platform, supporting the NREL 5 MW reference wind turbine — under the supervision of Prof. R. Panneer Selvam.

Research Topic

The core question: can a hexagonal-shaped semi-submersible floater improve the motion response and structural efficiency of a floating wind turbine platform, relative to established designs?

Platform

Novel hexagonal semi-submersible floater

Turbine

NREL 5 MW reference wind turbine

Benchmarked Against

OC3-Hywind, OC4-DeepCwind, WindFloat

Focus Areas

Platform motion limits & damping-plate effects on dynamic response

Research Work

Experimental

Free-decay & RAO Testing

Conducted free-decay tests and response amplitude operator (RAO) experiments in a 4 m wave flume to characterize platform hydrodynamic behavior.

Numerical

ORCAWave & OpenFAST Modelling

Built hydrodynamic and coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic models to simulate platform response across sea states and damping configurations.

Analysis

MATLAB Spectral Analysis Pipeline

Developed a MATLAB pipeline for PSD (Welch's method), RAO computation, and spectral statistics — validating OpenFAST simulation outputs against experimental wave-flume data across multiple damping configurations.

Design Study

Damping Plate Effects

Studied the influence of damping plates on dynamic response and platform motion limits, benchmarking findings against established platform concepts.

Conferences

Accepted

Resonance Mitigation of a Modular Hexagonal Floater

OMAE 2026 — Paper No. OMAE2026-180870

Journal Publication

In Preparation

Hexagonal Semi-Submersible FOWT Platform — Full Manuscript

A full-length manuscript covering platform design, motion response, and benchmark comparisons, targeted at Q1 journals such as Ocean Engineering and Applied Ocean Research.