FUlly Numerical strategY for SUrrogate modelling of Monopile Offshore wind turbines

Project Information

FUNnY-SUMO

Grant agreement ID: 101108665

DOI

10.3030/101108665

Project closed

EC signature date 7 July 2023

Start date 1 December 2023

End date 31 January 2026

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 181 152,96

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDADE DA CORUNA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FUNnY-SUMO (FUlly Numerical strategY for SUrrogate modelling of Monopile Offshore wind turbines)

Reporting period: 2023-12-01 to 2026-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Europe’s transition to climate neutrality and greater energy independence requires a major increase in offshore wind energy. However, offshore wind turbines operate in harsh environments where structures are exposed simultaneously to wind, waves, and sea currents. Predicting these combined loads accurately is essential for safer, more efficient, and more economical designs, yet this remains a major scientific and engineering challenge because these environmental actions are often analysed separately and high-fidelity simulations are computationally expensive. FUNnY-SUMO was created to address this gap by developing a fully numerical strategy for monopile offshore wind turbines that combines two components: a validated high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics model and a surrogate model that reproduces key load trends much faster. The project's overall objective was to develop and validate a 3D CFD framework capable of representing current, wave, and wind actions, first individually and then in a coupled way, and to use the resulting high-quality dataset to build a surrogate-modeling strategy for rapid engineering prediction and future design exploration. In this way, FUNnY-SUMO supports the European Green Deal, the digitalisation of engineering workflows, and the long-term reduction of cost and uncertainty in offshore renewable-energy infrastructure.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project, a complete numerical workflow was developed for offshore monopile wind turbine analysis under realistic environmental conditions. The work began with the creation of high-fidelity CFD models, including domain definition, meshing strategies, numerical settings, and verification-oriented sensitivity studies. The project then advanced through validation activities for hydrodynamic loading, aerodynamic loading, and the coupled wind–wave–current case. Building on these validated simulations, a structured computational database was generated and used to construct a surrogate-modeling framework for rapid prediction of relevant load quantities. The project, therefore, moved from detailed physics-based simulation to data-driven reduced-order prediction, which was the core ambition of the proposal. A major scientific achievement was the development of a validated CFD model for offshore monopile systems under concurrent wind, wave and current conditions. A second key achievement was the successful development of the surrogate-modeling strategy derived from those high-fidelity simulations, enabling much faster engineering use of the knowledge embedded in the CFD results. The fellowship also delivered strong scientific and professional outcomes through journal publications, conference presentations, seminars, technical training, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Overall, the project achieved the planned scientific pathway from validated high-fidelity modelling to surrogate modelling, and the objectives of the proposal were completed.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

FUNnY-SUMO goes beyond the state of the art by addressing offshore monopile systems through an integrated numerical strategy rather than isolated analyses of single environmental actions. The project contributes to the field by showing that coupled wind–wave–current loading can be represented through a validated CFD framework and then translated into a surrogate-modeling approach that is much cheaper and faster to use. This is important because traditional high-fidelity simulation is too expensive for broad parametric exploration, optimisation studies, digital twins, or fast engineering decision support. By creating both the validated simulation framework and the surrogate-modeling workflow, the project helps shift offshore wind analysis from one-case-at-a-time computation toward reusable, scalable and data-driven engineering tools. The results are relevant for researchers, engineering consultancies, offshore wind developers and digital-design teams interested in faster load prediction, broader design-space exploration and future applications such as optimisation, monitoring and AI-assisted engineering. The project also contributes methodological value through reproducibility-oriented workflows, structured computational datasets, and open-science practices that support future uptake and extension of the work. In this sense, FUNnY-SUMO is not only a modelling project, but also a step toward a new digital-engineering approach for offshore wind turbine support structures.

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