Soil-structure interaction of a laterally loaded hybrid foundation for offshore wind turbine

Abstract

With the ramping up of the capacity of the offshore wind turbine (OWT), the water depth, and the weight of the superstructure, the need of foundation structure with higher performance but reasonable cost demands innovation from geotechnical and structural engineering. The novel hybrid foundation takes advantage of the mature monopile technology, and innovatively integrates a loading wheel-bucket component around the monopile in the upper layer of soil. The addition of the integrated hybrid component is proven to enhance the overall performance of the foundation by previous research. The soil-structure interaction (SSI) of the hybrid foundation is the key to optimize the design of the structure. In this paper, a series of finite element (FE) analysis of the hybrid foundation under monotonic load are performed. The results of the FE analysis are compared with that of the geotechnical centrifuge tests. The soil pressure distributions on the pile and the hybrid component are investigated. The variation of the soil pressure profile with the increase of rotation angle is also studied. The soil resistance on the skirt of the bucket component is illustrated in the analysis. The FE models also prevail the failure mechanism of the hybrid foundation.