Non-linear assessment of cold water pipe (CWP) on the ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) installation under bending load

The Ocean Thermal Energy Convention (OTEC) is a floating platform that functions to convert seawater heat energy into electricity. Cold sea water is taken from the sea with a depth of 800 - 1000 m through Cold Water Pipe (CWP). This long CWP size causes unavoidable bending loads due to seawater flow. The extreme diameter/thickness ratio of CWP makes this pipe susceptible to buckling. In this research, numerical validation and mesh convergence study was carried out for CWP OTEC research under the next bending load. The results of numerical validation show that the similarity of this study with the reference reaches 15%. Dissimilarity can be influenced by different material inputs. The results of the mesh convergence study show that a mesh size of 55 mm is suitable for future research. This is because the 55 mm mesh size has results that are not much different from the smaller mesh size, but has a much smaller number of elements compared to the smaller mesh size.