| Popis: |
When selecting a suitable site for offshore wind farm, the impact on the marine environment is one of the most important issues. However, in most cases of the suitable sites selection, the distances from protected areas, spawning and wintering grounds of marine creatures are taken into account as environmental indicators, and there are few which explicitly consider the impact of the offshore windfarm on marine ecosystem including current field and water quality which could be affected by the construction of offshore power plants. In this study, the impacts of offshore wind farms on the flow field and water quality were investigated by numerical simulations, introducing models of offshore wind farms facilities and sessile organism on the structure into a three-dimensional coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem models. A nesting grid system were employed which combines a farm-scale grid and a local-scale grid. The large-scale simulation results showed that the changes in current due to a foundation structure of wind turbine could affect the flow field around the downstream structures. It is also found that water quality change in this scale is mainly caused by the changes in current field and the effects of sessile organisms on the structures are small. On the other hand, the small-scale results shows that the effects of sessile organisms may also appear in the very near vicinity of the structure. By using the developed model, it is possible to visualize the extent of the changes in currents and water quality caused by the offshore wind farm facilities. |
