Physical Modelling of Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations for TRL (Technology Readiness Level) Studies

• Published in: Journal of marine science and engineering Vol. 9; no. 6; p. 589
• Main Authors: Bhattacharya, Subhamoy, Lombardi, Domenico, Amani, Sadra, Aleem, Muhammad, Prakhya, Ganga, Adhikari, Sondipon, Aliyu, Abdullahi, Alexander, Nicholas, Wang, Ying, Cui, Liang, Jalbi, Saleh, Pakrashi, Vikram, Li, Wei, Mendoza, Jorge, Vimalan, Nathan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2021
• Subjects: Caissons; Clay; Complexity; Design; Earthquakes; Gas turbines; Geology; Gravity; Hurricanes; Life cycle; Life cycles; Limit states; Load; Model testing; Modelling; monopile; Ocean floor; Offshore; Offshore structures; offshore wind turbines; Oil and gas industries; Oil and gas industry; Petroleum engineering; proof of concept; R&D; Research & development; Retrofitting; scaling laws; Sea currents; Seismic activity; Shallow foundations; Stiffness; Suction; Systems stability; Technology assessment; TRL (Technology Readiness Level); Turbine engines; Turbines; Typhoons; Wind farms; Wind power; Wind turbines; China; North Sea
• ISSN: 2077-1312; 2077-1312
• DOI: 10.3390/jmse9060589

Offshore wind turbines are a complex, dynamically sensitive structure due to their irregular mass and stiffness distribution, and complexity of the loading conditions they need to withstand. There are other challenges in particular locations such as typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, sea-bed currents, and tsunami. Because offshore wind turbines have stringent Serviceability Limit State (SLS) requirements and need to be installed in variable and often complex ground conditions, their foundation design is challenging. Foundation design must be robust due to the enormous cost of retrofitting in a challenging environment should any problem occur during the design lifetime. Traditionally, engineers use conventional types of foundation systems, such as shallow gravity-based foundations (GBF), suction caissons, or slender piles or monopiles, based on prior experience with designing such foundations for the oil and gas industry. For offshore wind turbines, however, new types of foundations are being considered for which neither prior experience nor guidelines exist. One of the major challenges is to develop a method to de-risk the life cycle of offshore wind turbines in diverse metocean and geological conditions. The paper, therefore, has the following aims: (a) provide an overview of the complexities and the common SLS performance requirements for offshore wind turbine; (b) discuss the use of physical modelling for verification and validation of innovative design concepts, taking into account all possible angles to de-risk the project; and (c) provide examples of applications in scaled model tests.