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2016
Conference Paper
Titel
Advanced incorporation of soil-structure interaction into integrated load simulation
Abstract
The optimization of monopiles for offshore wind turbines is closely linked to improved foundation models, particularly for large diameter structures. During the last years significant progress on geotechnical level has been made to assess foundation models of monopiles based on high fidelity finite element models. In contrast, integrated load simulation models for offshore wind turbines commonly incorporate soil-structure interaction on a simplified level. This paper presents an efficient coupling approach, suggesting a practical interface between the offshore wind turbine substructure and sophisticated foundation models on mudline level. The approach is applied for load simulations on fatigue load level. The monopile load spectrum has to be defined in advance. Then, a limited number of static foundation pre-simulations are performed to predict the response on interface level by use of loaddisplacement curves. The integration of these curves into the load simulation model is achieved by an extension to spatial loaddisplacement surfaces. For this purpose an interpolation technique has been particularly developed which works efficient and accurate. The test simulations conducted for this paper are limited to co-directional wind and wave direction and a pre-dominant lateral loaded foundation, but the method offers the flexibility to be evolved to spatially loaded pile or bucket foundations.