Sensitivity analysis of monopiles' fatigue stresses to site conditions using Monte Carlo simulation

The design of support structures of offshore wind turbines contains high number of design variables that influence load characteristics and structural responses. These variables are stochastic and cause many uncertainties. Some of them are examined in this study. It is investigated how scattering of site conditions and load parameters affect the structural response. It is exemplified in terms of stresses that contribute to the accumulated fatigue damage within a monopile substructure. Random sampling of combinations of site conditions and load parameters is performed in order to classify the effects of parameter scattering on the stress variability by means of Sobol' indices. Analysis shows that the highest influence on stress outputs have the variations in the load parameters. The reason is the sensitivity of the structural dynamical response to the wave height increase and decrease of distance between the wave peak frequency and the structural eigenfrequencies.