Xinru Wang

• Wang, Xinru; Jiang, Zhiyu; Liu, Zihan; Wang, Shuaishuai & Cappietti, Lorenzo (2026). Preliminary design and analysis of a modular floating energy island concept. Ships and Offshore Structures. ISSN 1744-5302. doi: 10.1080/17445302.2026.2659868. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  With rapid population growth and the shortage of land resources, ocean space utilization has become a critical area of research. While multi-use offshore platforms have been extensively studied, challenges remain in ensuring their operability and survivability under offshore conditions. This work aims to develop an innovative floating island concept designed to facilitate multi-purpose ocean space utilization in Europe. First, hydrodynamic numerical analysis is carried out for a previously proposed single hexagonal floating platform. The numerical results show good agreement with the reference data from literature. Then, a floating renewable energy platform is proposed to host a 10-megawatt (MW) wind turbine and photovoltaic (PV) panels by the Pareto multi-objective optimization method. Key geometric parameters, including the side length (20–50 m), height (5–15 m), and panel thickness (0.5–2 m), are considered as the main optimization variables. The optimization objectives include its energy performance and construction cost, and the criteria include freeboard, initial stability, and the natural periods of heave and pitch motions. The dynamic responses of the designed floating energy island are also evaluated. This concept will be further developed in the future by combining more considerations, such as the configurations of PV arrays and the share of wind and solar power.

• Wang, Xinru; Zhu, Jianxun; Myrhaug, Dag; Wang, Hong & Holmedal, Lars Erik (2025). Numerical investigation of oscillatory flow regimes around an elliptic cylinder at low Keulegan-Carpenter and Reynolds numbers. Physical Review Fluids. 10(2). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.10.024702. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Oscillatory flow past an elliptic cylinder with an aspect ratio of 0.4 has been investigated for Keulegan-Carpenter numbers (𝐾⁢𝐶) ranging from 1 to 10 and Reynolds numbers (𝑅⁢𝑒) ranging from 60 to 150 by conducting two-dimensional numerical simulations. The physics mechanisms underpinning the identified flow regimes (A, C, F′, and F), including the alternating top- and bottom-dominated vortex shedding in regime C, as well as the one-sided vortex pair shedding in a new flow regime F′, and the diagonal two-sided vortex pairs shedding in flow regime F, have been investigated in detail. The transition between the top- and bottom-dominated vortex shedding within a secondary period in regime C is explained in terms of the cycle-by-cycle merging and diffusion processes of the remaining vortices within each oscillation period. It appears that the formation of the vortex pair shed from the cylinder in regimes F′ and F depends on the strength of the vortex remaining from the previous half of the oscillation period. The resulting hydrodynamic forces acting on the cylinder are explained in light of the vortex dynamics around the cylinder; this includes the occurrence of two crests and two troughs of the lift coefficient within one oscillation period in the flow regime F′, and an additional crest and trough of the lift coefficient in the flow regime F.

View all works in NVA