This chapter describes the facilities available within Mechanical APDL that enable it to perform integrated wind and wave load analyses for offshore wind turbines with a specialized wind loading software package. The purpose of using Mechanical APDL is to provide a realistic foundation model that can accurately model the foundation structural behavior under the influence of wave loading. Note that foundation here refers to the whole substructure that is under the influence of wave loading, i.e. from the sea surface down.

Two different methods of analysis to support a coupled aeroelastic-structural analysis can be used with Mechanical APDL to enable the design of the structures upon which wind turbines are positioned. Each method has advantages and disadvantages depending upon the data and resources available. The sequentially coupled solution is found in the following section and uses standard Mechanical APDL. There is an example of implementing a fully coupled solution that can be found in Fully Coupled Wind Turbine Example in Mechanical APDL in the Programmer's Reference. This requires programmer knowledge, software compilation tools, and customization to enable the coupling to an aeroelastic analysis.