The increasing demand for renewable energy and the need to achieve global decarbonization goals have led the energy sector to explore remote areas where Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) are expected to play a significant role. These far from shore located turbines harness strong and consistent winds, but their deployment in deeper waters poses challenges. In addition, the intermittent nature of wind energy, grid congestion, and transmission losses further complicate meeting the energy demands. Combining FOWTs with offshore hydrogen production offers a promising solution by reducing reliance on electrical infrastructure. Green hydrogen, produced from renewable sources, provides a versatile and proven option for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors. The integration of hydrogen production directly from a FOWT presents a compelling alternative, but the transportation of hydrogen from Hang-Off Point (HOP) at the FOWT to the Termination Point (TP) at the seabed through flexible pipes requires ensuring the structural integrity under static and environmental loading.
This research evaluates the impact of various parameters in lazy wave configurations on the tension and curvature behavior of flexible pipes used for hydrogen transport in offshore wind-to-hydrogen systems, utilizing simulations performed in OrcaFlex (OF). The research shows that failure modes, tension, overbending, and compression, are only exceeded in non-optimal wave configurations, with the Minimum Bend Radius (MBR) being a more critical constraint than the Minimum Breaking Load (MBL). However, both limits are breached when compression, looping at the Touch Down Point (TDP), or collapse has already occurred, suggesting that the pipe may be overdesigned or that the lazy wave configuration represents a conservative design approach. Furthermore, research also finds that environmental factors have minimal impact on tension and curvature, with static effects contributing for 86\% of total tension and 78\% of total curvature. This indicates that static analysis can provide an initial configuration without the need for computationally demanding dynamic simulations, as the design limits of MBL and MBR are exceeded in similar static and dynamic scenarios. Lastly, the design of a lazy wave configuration can be simplified to three configurational parameters: a buoyant section parameter (the outer diameter of the Buoyancy Modules (BM), pitch between BMs, or the buoyant section length), the first section catenary length, and a total configuration parameter (total length or horizontal distance between the HOP and TP), since the parameters within each group exhibit similar behavior in terms of tension and curvature responses when varied individually.