Geotechnical fragility analysis of monopile foundations for offshore wind turbines in extreme storms

T.S. Charlton and M. Rouainia

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 182, issue C, 1126-1140

Abstract: Offshore wind turbines (OWTs) must withstand harsh environmental loads over their 20- to 30-year design life. Fragility analysis investigates the probability of damage over a range of hazard intensities and is integral to a performance-based engineering approach. The focus of this paper is on monopiles, which are widely used to support OWTs in water depths up to around 40m. The paper presents a fragility analysis of monopiles in extreme storms in terms of geotechnical performance, measured by permanent rotation of the foundation. Geotechnical fragility has so far not been comprehensively addressed due to the challenge of predicting soil behaviour under cyclic loading and estimating the probability of extreme responses. On the latter, the paper develops efficient Karhunen-Loeve representations of wind and wave loading that can be combined with inexpensive probabilistic methods to compute fragility. The framework was demonstrated using a representative scenario of a 5 MW OWT installed in clay. Non-linear foundation response was captured by a dynamic 3D finite element model. Fragility curves were generated using subset simulation for storms with return periods (RPs) from 1 to 100 years. Fragility during extreme storms (with 50- and 100-year RPs) was significantly higher than storms with RPs of 10 years or less.

Keywords: Offshore wind; Monopile; Fragility; Random process; Subset simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:182:y:2022:i:c:p:1126-1140

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.10.092

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