Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction and Damage Detection for Offshore Wind Turbines

Synopsis

Presentation 1: Recent advances in Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction and Damage Detection for Offshore Wind Turbines (Dr Luke J. Prendergast)

Offshore wind turbines (OWT) have experienced significant growth in recent years, both in the capacity of individual turbines and their size. This is a response to the urgent need for a green energy transition to reduce fossil fuel use, and to mitigate the worst of climate change impacts. The rapid development of larger OWTs has necessitated the development of novel approaches for the design and analysis of monopiles, the most common foundation type used to support fixed-bottom offshore turbines. Monopile behaviour differs significantly from that of more flexible piles, and new modelling approaches are necessary to ensure the appropriate behaviour is encapsulated. OWTs are subjected to harsh wind and wave loads offshore, and must withstand thousands of load cycles over their design life. When coupled with the evolution of damage such as scour erosion, this creates a challenging situation relating to modelling and understanding system behaviour. This talk covers recent advances in dynamic soil-structure interaction from small-strain system behaviour to larger strain cyclic load responses. An overview of experimental testing for small-strain behaviour determination and numerical modelling for dynamic soil-structure interaction of monopiles using 1D spring-beam elements is presented.

Presentation 2: Design of an Offshore Wind Turbine in North Aegean (M. Michailidis)

The present study investigates the design of an offshore wind turbine in North Aegean. The proposed location, east of Lemnos, is in accordance with the Greek strategic framework of 2015, which has been developed based on sustainability, strategy policy, and buildability axes. A monopile foundation is investigated to support structurally an 5 MW offshore wind turbine ensuring the structure’s efficiency in strength, serviceability, and fatigue according to the DNV-GL, IEC, and NORSOK regulations, considering the soil structure interaction for a sandstone case according to the API standards. The design of the examined structure is realized through an iteration process, that ensures the aforementioned design criteria, by implementing a time history analysis through the FAST NREL software. This study demonstrates that the soil-structure interaction is of significant importance for this kind of structure regarding the development of the stress profiles, the offered damping of the soil to the structure, and the optimisation of the structure, offering noticeable embodied carbon and cost reduction against the conservative API regulations, as well.

About the speakers

Dr Luke J Prendergast

Dr Luke J. Prendergast is Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at University of Nottingham, UK. He specialises in damage detection for civil engineering infrastructure, and offshore wind foundation engineering. Prior to this, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Dr Prendergast obtained his PhD at University College Dublin, Ireland (2015) and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from University College Cork, Ireland (2011). He also works as an Assistant Editor at the (Elsevier) Journal of Sound and Vibration (JSV), with focus on research related to damage identification in civil engineering structures. His current research interests include Structural Health Monitoring, Vibration-Based Bridge Scour Monitoring, Vehicle-Bridge Interaction, and Offshore Wind Foundation Engineering.

Michalis Michailidis

Michalis Michailidis is a dynamic professional currently working as Marine & Infrastructure Division Technical Engineer at Archirodon, Greece. He holds an MSc in Earthquake Engineering at Imperial College London and a MEng Diploma in Civil Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Michalis has been involved in a variety of projects in the UK, Greece and Middle East valued even at £2bn, across his career while being in the UK and Greece. He is also currently an elected member of the SECED Young Members Sub-Committee in the UK.

Registration

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Further information

The talk is organised by SECED Young Members. For further information, please contact Evangelos Yfantidis (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

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