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Probabilistic Analysis of Offshore Wind Turbine Soil-Structure Interaction

A literature review of current design and analysis methods for offshore wind turbine (OWT) foundations is presented, focusing primarily on the monopile foundation. Laterally loaded monopile foundations are typically designed using the American Petroleum Institute (API) p-y method for offshore oil platforms, which presents several issues when extended to OWTs, mostly with respect to the large pile diameters required and the effect of cyclic loading from wind and waves. Although remedies have been proposed, none have been incorporated into current design standards. Foundations must be uniquely designed for each wind farm due to extreme dependence on site characteristics. The uncertainty in soil conditions as well as wind and wave loading is currently treated with a deterministic design procedure, though standards leave the door open for engineers to use a probability-based approach. This thesis uses probabilistic methods to examine the reliability of OWT pile foundations. A static two-dimensional analysis in MATLAB includes the nonlinearity of p-y soil spring stiffness, variation in soil properties, sensitivity to pile design parameters and loading conditions. Results are concluded with a natural frequency analysis.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:theses-1960
Date01 January 2012
CreatorsCarswell, Wystan
PublisherScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
Source SetsUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceMasters Theses 1911 - February 2014

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