" Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) are a promising technology to harness the abundant offshore wind energy resources in open ocean areas. A FOWT consists of a floating platform, the moorings, and the wind turbine structure (tower + Rotor-Nacelle Assembly (RNA)). The main focus of this thesis is to develop multibody dynamic models that integrate the structural dynamics, and hydrostatic, hydrodynamic, aerodynamic and mooring system loads. Special efforts are also devoted to characterize the mooring and hydrostatic loads as main sources of systems stiffness that shapes the dynamic behavior of the system. Two approaches for modeling the platform/tower dynamics are developed, a rigid multibody model and a coupled rigid-flexible multibody model. Both models treat the platform, nacelle and rotor as six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) rigid bodies. However, modeling the wind turbine tower dynamics differs between these approaches. The rigid model considers the tower as a 6-DOF rigid body while the flexible model represents the tower as a three-dimensional (3D) tapered damped Euler-Bernoulli beam undergoing coupled general rigid body and elastic motions. In both approaches, the wind turbine drivetrain dynamics is also considered to capture the rotor spin response. The equations of motions of both models are derived symbolically using Lagrange's equations. The hydrostatic restoring loads are evaluated through development of a novel nonlinear hydrostatic approach. This approach allows evaluating the exact hydrostatic force and moment and position of the center of buoyancy as function of the platform displacement and finite rotation. New exact expressions for the water plane area restoring moments are developed. The hydrostatic stiffness matrix at an arbitrary position and orientation of the platform is subsequently derived. A quasi-static approach is then developed to determine the cable tensions of the single-segment and multi-segment mooring system configurations proposed to moor the platform to the seabed. The approach uses different governing equations, depending on whether the mooring lines partially rest on the seabed; are suspended; or fully taut. The exact mooring stiffness is subsequently derived and the influence of several mooring system parameters on the mooring system stiffness is investigated. As an alternative to the quasi-static cable model, a lumped mass cable model incorporating the cable-seabed contact effect is developed to integrate the cable dynamics into the FOWT system dynamics. The equations of motion of the mooring line nodes are assembled for the two mooring system configurations under consideration. A new methodology is also presented to calculate the equilibrium profile of the mooring line lying on a seabed as desirable initial conditions for solving the discretized cable equations of motion. Finally, the theoretical models are implemented through a large simulation tool to analyze the dynamic behavior of the spar FOWT system under study. A series of simulations under defined external loads (load cases) are performed to validate the dynamic models. The simulation results are compared with similar results obtained from well-known offshore wind design codes. The simulation results are found to be in very good agreement with the reported results. Numerical experiments are also performed to investigate the influence of the tower flexibility, mooring system configuration, tower twist and cable dynamics on the system dynamic behavior. The results show that the system responses obtained from the rigid body model under-predict the platform yaw response and exhibit less damping than those obtained from the flexible model. It is also found that the mooring system configuration choice does not influence the platform roll and pitch responses or tower elastic deflections." --