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Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group

 

Wave windOur industrial collaborators are Dong Energy, McAlpine; Renewable Energy Systems (RES) and KW Ltd have helped shape the research agenda and committed resources to ongoing research at Cambridge. Our partners will help us during the planning and testing phases of the project as well as in quick dissemination of the results to the interested stake holders in this sector.  The research on offshore monopile foundations has other added benefits. Development of strength degradation curves for clays in non-seismic applications can benefit other onshore and offshore applications such as inclined piles for bridge abutments or wharf structures in the onshore sector and sea-bed anchors, suction emplaced caissons, etc in the offshore sector. The new equipment for the measurement of soil stiffness and dynamic response of foundation systems that will be developed during this project will benefit the worldwide geotechnical modelling community.

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Currently, the researchers in Cambridge are working on Phase 1 of the project, which is the monotonic pushover of monopiles in soft soil of different strengths. The next phase of the project involves more exciting cyclic lateral load tests with both thousands of small amplitude cycles (normal operation) and also statnamic testing. This later technique will yield the dynamic response of the monopile-soil system at any given soil state. Under normal operation conditions this will yield the natural frequency of the foundation system. The statnamic test can also be carried out during large amplitude storm loading events to detect the changes in natural frequency and hence the degradation in the soil stiffness in these large strain events. Recent workshop on the Future Offshore Windfarm Foundations was held in Bremen, Germany on 8th – 10th November, 2011 with  all major European players in the Offshore Industry present. The Cambridge group made a presentation on the possibilities of testing current monopile foundations and future foundation options for deep waters such as gravity foundations or tension piles for floating structures at this meeting using the Cambridge Beam Centrifuge Facility. More details can be found at www.futurewindfoundations.com

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