Porenwasserdruckaufbau und Bodenentfestigung um Pfahlgründungen von Offshore-Windenergieanlagen

Pore pressure buildup and soil stress relaxation in monopile foundations of offshore wind converters

For the installation of wind turbines in the offshore environment and their foundation in the seabed it is customary to employ large-diameter steel piles, either in monopile or multi-pile configurations (jacket, tripod, etc. ...). The effects of cyclic lateral loading on the offshore piles and particularly the possibility of a progressive accumulation of residual pore water pressure within the saturated embedding soil are discussed in this article. Here it is shown that this can lead to significant changes of their behaviour under external loading, which can potentially compromise the foundation's stability or serviceability. Furthermore, some of the singular effects arising during a realistic storm of moderate magnitude as well as their potential for transient damages to the foundation's stiffness are addressed in the paper. For the investigation of these phenomena the authors have employed a coupled bi-phasic analytical model of the offshore foundation. The constitutive model employed for the seabed, in the frame of the theory of Generalized Plasticity, can reproduce some complex features of cyclic soil behaviour such as the tendency for a progressive densification under cyclic loading, which is responsible for the soil liquefaction phenomena in undrained conditions. Finally, some implications and specific recommendations for the design of offshore monopiles in the frame of the limit states are provided.