The wet-towing resistance of the composite bucket foundation for offshore wind turbines

The composite bucket foundation (CBF) for offshore wind turbines is the basis for a one-step integrated transportation and installation technique, which can be adapted to the construction and development needs of offshore wind farms due to its special structural form. To transport and install bucket foundations together with the upper portion of offshore wind turbines, a non-self-propelled integrated transportation and installation vessel was designed. In this paper, as the first stage of applying the proposed one-step integrated construction technique, the floating behavior during the transportation of CBF with a wind turbine tower for the Xiangshui wind farm in the Jiangsu province was monitored. The influences of speed, wave height, and wind on the floating behavior of the structure were studied. The results show that the roll and pitch angles remain close to level during the process of lifting and towing the wind turbine structure. In addition, the safety of the aircushion structure of the CBF was verified by analyzing the measurement results for the interaction force and the depth of the liquid within the bucket. The results of the three-DOF (degree of freedom) acceleration monitoring on the top of the test tower indicate that the wind turbine could meet the specified acceleration value limits during towing.

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Failure Envelopes of Composite Bucket Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbines under Combined Loading with considering Different Scour Depths

Shock and Vibration ◽

10.1155/2021/7922572 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 ◽

pp. 1-15

Author(s):

Yuanxu Jing ◽

Yuan Wang ◽

Jingqi Huang ◽

Wei Wang ◽

Lunbo Luo

Keyword(s):

Wind Turbines ◽

Bending Moment ◽

Offshore Wind ◽

Combined Loading ◽

Failure Envelope ◽

Bucket Foundation ◽

Offshore Wind Turbines ◽

Failure Envelopes ◽

The Stability ◽

The Right

The composite bucket foundation of offshore wind turbines is subjected to a variety of loads in the marine environment, such as horizontal load H, vertical load V , bending moment M, and torque T. In addition, due to the characteristics of its connection section, the water flow around the foundation will produce scour pits of various degrees, reducing the depth of the bucket foundation, which has a nonnegligible impact on the overall stability of the bucket foundation. In this paper, the failure envelope characteristics of different combinations of loads on bucket foundations, including V -H-T, V -M-T, conventional V -H-M, and noncoplanar V -H-M, are numerically investigated with considering different scour depths. The numerical results indicate that the V -H-T, V -M-T, conventional V -H-M, and noncongruent V -H-M failure envelopes gradually shrink inwards with increasing scour depth, and the stability of the composite bucket foundation decreases; the conventional V -H-M failure envelope shows an asymmetry of convexity to the right, and the noncongruent V -H-M failure envelope shows an asymmetry of outward convexity to the left and right. The corresponding mathematical expressions for the failure envelope are obtained through the normalized fitting process, which can be used to evaluate the stability of the bucket foundation based on the relative relationship between the failure envelope and the actual load conditions, which can provide practical guidance for engineering design.

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