Fitness-for-purpose assessment of cracked offshore wind turbine monopile

In this paper, the procedure for flaw acceptability assessment is examined through a case study of a semi-elliptical surface crack in an offshore monopile as it grows till it forms a through thickness crack. Using the procedure prescribed in an industrial standard (BS 7910), the fracture ratio, K_r is shown to increase monotonically with increasing crack depth. The load ratio, L_r, is initially insensitive to the crack depth. However, there is a rapid increase in L_r when the crack depth to thickness ratio exceeds 80%. L_r values obtained from detailed 3D FE limit analysis using elastic-perfectly-plastic material behaviour do not exhibit the asymptotic behaviour predicted by BS 7910 as the flaw transitions from deep crack to through-thickness crack. Furthermore, K_r predicted by BS 7910 is shown to be an over-estimation for the typical dimensions of offshore monopiles. The findings suggest that a structure with a deep flaw may be identified as unacceptable based on BS 7910 when it may still possess a non-trivial amount of structural residual life. This is a concern for monopiles where crack growth as a large flaw forms a significant part of the total life.     

A multi-spring model for monopile analysis in soft clays

The offshore wind industry in China has seen a rapid development in recent years and is projected to account for half of global yearly installed capacity in the years to come. Monopiles are a popular foundation solution for supporting offshore wind turbines. However, due to challenging seabed soil conditions, which often feature thick normally consolidated soft clays and harsh environmental loading (i.e. frequent occurrence of typhoons), extremely long monopiles are often designed. The large monopiles are costly to fabricate and install and sometimes kills the viability of the concept in cases where the bedrock is relatively shallow and expensive piling in rock is otherwise required. However, the state-of-practice for designing these monopiles in clays is typically by using the API p-y springs, which are widely known to underestimate soil-pile interaction stiffness and capacity for large diameter monopiles. Improvement to the design method can therefore have significant economic implications to the industry. The paper presents an effort toward this direction. A multi-spring beam-column model suitable for monopile design in soil conditions in China is proposed. The model features three soil spring components, namely the lateral p-y spring, the pile tip base shear s-y spring and rotational m-θ springs along the pile shaft. The validity of the model is verified by a comprehensive suite finite element parametric analyses. Guidance for incorporating the cyclic loading effect into design is also provided. The model proposed in this paper has large potentials for application in design practice.     

The influence of fully nonlinear wave forces on aero-hydro-elastic calculations of monopile wind turbines

The response of an offshore wind turbine tower and its monopile foundation has been investigated when exposed to linear and fully nonlinear irregular waves on four different water depths. The investigation focuses on the consequences of including full nonlinearity in the wave kinematics. The linear and nonlinear irregular wave realizations are calculated using the fully nonlinear potential flow wave model OceanWave3D [1]. The linear and nonlinear wave realizations are compared using both a static analysis on a fixed monopile and dynamic calculations with the aeroelastic code Flex5 [2]. The conclusion from this analysis is that linear wave theory is generally sufficient for estimating the fatigue loading, but wave nonlinearity is important in determining the ultimate design loads.     

Joint earthquake and wave action on the monopile wind turbine foundation: An experimental study

Offshore wind turbines in regions of active seismicity are under a potential threat caused by the joint earthquake and ocean wave action. Taking NREL-5MW monopile wind turbine as the prototype, this study is devoted to probe the joint action of strong earthquakes and moderate sea conditions. A series of shake table model tests of scale 30:1 have been carried out by the contemporary world unique facility (Earthquake, Wave and Current Joint Simulation System) to investigate the structural response in dry flume, low and high calm water levels, with and without regular or random waves. Particular interest has been in the nacelle acceleration subjected to strong ground motions as well as to random waves. The experimental results of nacelle peak accelerations and corresponding dynamic amplification factors show that the joint earthquake and wave action is important for the proper evaluation of structural response. Ignoring the effect of wave action in seismic analysis will lead to underestimation of structural response, especially when the monopile foundation is dynamically sensitive. The coupling of earthquake and wave actions is sourced not only from the relative velocity of vibration but also from the initial condition induced by waves. It has been also derived that the peak acceleration excited by a moderate sea condition is comparable to that by a moderate earthquake.     

Corrosion fatigue load frequency sensitivity analysis

This paper presents experimental assessment of crack growth rates of S355J2+N steel in a corrosion fatigue environment similar to what is experienced on offshore wind farm monopile structures under various cyclic load frequencies in order to assess the effect of cyclic frequency of the applied loading within a frequency range pertinent to the structure. Fatigue crack propagation behaviour in this test programme is evaluated through fatigue tests on six compact tension test specimens in air and in laboratory simulated seawater under free corrosion condition. Fatigue crack lengths were monitored by back face strain (BFS), DCPD and ACPD. A regression model was derived through the BFS method to express strain values as a function of crack length to width ratio. The effectiveness of BFS method is particularly demonstrated in the simulated marine environment. Within the range of test frequencies, crack growth rates in simulated seawater when compared to the equivalent air test revealed environmental reduction factors of 2 and 4 at lower and higher values of stress intensity factors respectively. Significant difference in the results of the seawater test frequencies is discussed.     

Permanent accumulated rotation of offshore wind turbine monopile due to typhoon-induced cyclic loading

In order to study the effect of typhoons on the accumulated deformation of monopile foundations for offshore wind turbines, a series of 1-g laboratory model tests with a geometrical scale of 1:100 were carried out. Through the horizontal static and cyclic loading tests of a stiff pile embedded in a medium dense sand deposit, the relationship between the accumulated rotation of the pile and the number of loading cycles under different loading conditions was obtained. The results show that the final accumulated rotation is mainly caused by the typhoon load series and is not affected by the loading sequence. Based on these results, a method is presented to predict the accumulated rotation of the monopile foundation during its service life, and a case study of a 6 MW wind turbine supported by a monopile at a water depth of 30 m in sand is conducted by using the method. The results show that the permanent accumulated rotation of the monopile throughout the design life is mainly contributed by cyclic loading induced by typhoons and the contribution of cyclic loading with small amplitudes can be ignored.     

Static and dynamic loading behavior of a hybrid foundation for offshore wind turbines

Considering the deficiencies of the traditional monopile foundation for offshore wind turbines (OWTs) in severe marine environments, an innovative hybrid foundation is developed in the present study. The hybrid foundation consists of a traditional monopile and a wide–shallow bucket. A series of numerical analyses are conducted to investigate its behavior under the static and dynamic loading, considering various loading eccentricities. A traditional monopile with the same steel volume is used as a benchmark. Although the monopile outperforms the hybrid foundation in terms of the ultimate moment capacity under each loading eccentricity, the latter can achieve superior or the same performance with nearly half of the pile length in the design loading range. Moreover, the horizontal load and moment are mainly resisted by the bucket and the single pile in the hybrid foundation respectively. The failure mechanism of both the hybrid foundation and the monopile is excessive rotation. In the rotation angle of 0.05 rad, the rotation center is located at the depth of approximately 0.6–0.75 times and 0.65–0.75 times the pile length for the hybrid foundation and the monopile respectively. The increasing loading eccentricities can lead to increasing moment bearing capacity, increasing initial stiffness and upward movement of the rotation center of the two foundations, while decreasing load sharing ratio of the single pile in the hybrid foundation. Three scenarios are considered in investigating the dynamic loading behavior of the hybrid foundation. Dynamic response results reveal that addition of the bucket to the foundation can restrain the rotation and lateral displacement effectively. The superiority of the hybrid foundation is more obvious under the combined wave and current loading.     

Equivalent linear pseudostatic and dynamic modelling of vertically vibrating monopile

To optimize offshore wind turbine (OWT) design, an engineering tool has been developed allowing for a detailed investigation of the effects of nonlinear soil stiffness and damping on foundation dynamics. We have studied the response of a vertically oscillating offshore wind monopile foundation in a realistic soil profile subjected to loads between 1 and 200 MN in the frequency range 0–10 Hz with pseudo-static and equivalent linear dynamic model. The non-linear soil behaviour is modelled with an equivalent linear method with shear modulus reduction and damping curves as input. The tool is verified and validated by comparison with elasto-dynamic model and experiments. With increasing load amplitudes foundation stiffness increases and damping decreases. For large load amplitudes the lower part of the pile foundation contributes more to foundation damping. The results indicate the nonlinear foundation stiffness and damping can be modelled rationally by combining stiffness and hysteretic damping from nonlinear static tools with apparent mass and radiation damping from elasto-dynamic analysis. The tool can be used to compute soil springs and dampers based on laboratory-based soil stiffness and damping.