I am concerned that a sea full of floating wind farms (as planned for the North Sea and elsewhere) is capable of messing up surfing waves. See https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4891-2024
That's a really interesting thought. Just so happens a coauthor of mine passed me a similar article today. It looks at the reflections of surface waves due to a field of vertical cylinders, exactly your point here but for inshore arrays. Thank you for sending this one!
Very important research, because in environmental impact assessments of offshore wind farms they always argue that a fixed monopile foundation modifies the incoming wave field not significantly if its diameter is smaller that the wavelength. They use wave models such as SWAN calculating 'blockage effect' to 'prove' this. But this research in a wave tank shows that a periodic array of small cylinders fixed to the seabed can still strongly affect waves, even when the individual cylinders are small relative to wavelength, because the effect is collective and resonant and not just due to individual blockage. It follows that large offshore wind farms of hundreds of wind turbines could under certain conditions modify wave propagation more strongly than would be expected from considering isolated cylinders alone. There are plans for tens of thousands of wind turbines in the North Sea.
I am concerned that a sea full of floating wind farms (as planned for the North Sea and elsewhere) is capable of messing up surfing waves. See https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4891-2024
That's a really interesting thought. Just so happens a coauthor of mine passed me a similar article today. It looks at the reflections of surface waves due to a field of vertical cylinders, exactly your point here but for inshore arrays. Thank you for sending this one!
Article is here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42286-026-00140-1
Very important research, because in environmental impact assessments of offshore wind farms they always argue that a fixed monopile foundation modifies the incoming wave field not significantly if its diameter is smaller that the wavelength. They use wave models such as SWAN calculating 'blockage effect' to 'prove' this. But this research in a wave tank shows that a periodic array of small cylinders fixed to the seabed can still strongly affect waves, even when the individual cylinders are small relative to wavelength, because the effect is collective and resonant and not just due to individual blockage. It follows that large offshore wind farms of hundreds of wind turbines could under certain conditions modify wave propagation more strongly than would be expected from considering isolated cylinders alone. There are plans for tens of thousands of wind turbines in the North Sea.