Abstract
The growing demand for offshore wind energy has driven a rapid increase in wind turbine size and the development of large-scale wind farms, often comprising more than 100 turbines. However, the environmental impact of underwater noise emissions remains largely unaddressed. The Off-coustic project (ERC Consolidator Grant Ref. 101086075) develops numerical methods and experiments by integrating wind turbine noise prediction techniques to predict the wind turbine acoustic footprint.
Here, we present an approach to calculating the transmission of aerodynamic noise into underwater acoustics, taking into account the air-water impedance and the penetration angle (governed by Snell's law). Our calculations show that aerodynamic noise from offshore wind farms may affect marine life. In addition, we present the capa- bilities of our solver, HORSES3D, to simulate wind tur- bines in offshore environments. This solver will soon be capable of simulating acoustics in offshore environments.