Abstract
Mono-pile foundations have been widely used for offshore wind turbines principally due to their convenient construction and cost-effective nature. So far, little attention has been paid to large diameter “semi-rigid” piles that have distinct behaviours from flexible or ideally rigid piles. This paper presents a series of centrifuge model tests to study the deforming and bearing characteristics of a 5.9 dia. semi-rigid pile under lateral loadings in kaolin clay. For monotonic loading, a modified p–y curve analysis model considering rotational soil flow near the rotation centre of pile was proposed, highlighting the limitation of classic plane-strain based plasticity models to evaluate the ultimate lateral pile-soil resistance. For cyclic loading, a strong correlation between the degree of soil degradation and cyclic load amplitude was identified. Besides, a degradation factor model, accounting for various cyclic stress levels and soil depths, was proposed, which can be used to assess the accumulative displacement of semi-rigid piles under cyclic loadings in soft clay.
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