Seismic response of offshore wind turbines supported on Monopiles and Suction Buckets: Numerical modelling and soft computing study

In this study, a coupled numerical modeling and soft computing was carried out to investigate the seismic response and liquefaction resistance of two common types of foundations used for offshore wind turbines (OWT), namely the Monopile and Suction Bucket Foundations under combined loading of wave, wind and earthquake. A series of fully coupled non-linear dynamic analysis was performed using FLAC-3D to produce the database required in the soft computing procedure by evaluating the effect of different factors such as foundation's geometrical properties (foundation's type and its aspect ratio), soil properties (relative density and depth of liquefiable layer) and the input ground motion parameters (frequency and amplitude). Parameters of SANISAND constitutive model were calibrated using centrifuge studies performed on OWTs. Afterwards, genetic algorithm (GA) was used to develop prediction models for prediction the seismic response parameters, especially the maximum value of tower's rotation, which was verified against the results of centrifuge experiments.

Automated summary

This study investigates the seismic response and liquefaction resistance of Monopile and Suction Bucket Foundations for offshore wind turbines using coupled numerical modeling and soft computing. Non-linear dynamic analysis and centrifuge studies were carried out to develop prediction models and verify their accuracy.