DEM element modelling of silent piling group installation for offshore wind turbine foundations

TY - CONF

T1 - DEM element modelling of silent piling group installation for offshore wind turbine foundations

AU - Cerfontaine, Benjamin

AU - Brown, Michael

AU - Ciantia, Matteo

AU - Huisman, Marco

AU - Ottolini, Marius

PY - 2021/6

Y1 - 2021/6

N2 - Offshore wind farms are now built in deeper water and bigger foundations are required to stabilise wind turbines of increasing sizes. Pile driving is the most widespread foundation installation method, but more stringent environmental regulations necessitate costly mitigation methods to reduce underwater noise emissions. The silent piling (push-in) concept presented in this work is composed of a cluster of four piles, progressively installed by successive jacking sequences. During one sequence, each pile is moved downward by 0.5m stroke, while the other piles are used as reaction. This paper presents the results of Discrete Element Method (DEM) of the installation process. This work identifies the main features of the push-in installation method, such as pile interaction, progressive plugging and loss of efficiency as a function of depth. It is shown that the cluster capacity can reach six times the weight of the tool necessary to silently install the piles.

AB - Offshore wind farms are now built in deeper water and bigger foundations are required to stabilise wind turbines of increasing sizes. Pile driving is the most widespread foundation installation method, but more stringent environmental regulations necessitate costly mitigation methods to reduce underwater noise emissions. The silent piling (push-in) concept presented in this work is composed of a cluster of four piles, progressively installed by successive jacking sequences. During one sequence, each pile is moved downward by 0.5m stroke, while the other piles are used as reaction. This paper presents the results of Discrete Element Method (DEM) of the installation process. This work identifies the main features of the push-in installation method, such as pile interaction, progressive plugging and loss of efficiency as a function of depth. It is shown that the cluster capacity can reach six times the weight of the tool necessary to silently install the piles.

KW - push in piles

KW - piles

KW - offshore wind energy

UR - https://icpe-ipa.org/

M3 - Paper

SP - 227

T2 - Second International Conference on Press-in Engineering

Y2 - 19 June 2021 through 20 June 2021

ER -