The influence of the soil plug on the bearing capacity of bucket foundations in clay

Abstract

ABSTRACT The soil plug is a common problem in the installation of bucket foundations for offshore wind turbines (OWTs), but there is little research about the influence of the soil plug on the bearing performance of bucket foundations. In this paper, the range of soil plug height is firstly determined according to the recordings of engineering cases and geotechnical tests in the published literature. Then the finite element models of bucket foundations with different soil plugs are established to investigate the influence of the soil plug on uniaxial and combined bearing capacities under different soil properties and embedment ratios. Based on the numerical results, a bearing capacity calculation method of bucket foundations considering the effect of soil plug is proposed. The proposed equivalent method can be used to evaluate the influence of the soil plug on the bearing capacities of bucket foundations.