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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tom CharltonORCiD, Dr Mohamed Rouainia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2021 The AuthorsOffshore wind turbines (OWTs) must withstand harsh environmental loads over their 20- to 30-year design life. Fragility analysis investigates the probability of damage over a range of hazard intensities and is integral to a performance-based engineering approach. The focus of this paper is on monopiles, which are widely used to support OWTs in water depths up to around 40m. The paper presents a fragility analysis of monopiles in extreme storms in terms of geotechnical performance, measured by permanent rotation of the foundation. Geotechnical fragility has so far not been comprehensively addressed due to the challenge of predicting soil behaviour under cyclic loading and estimating the probability of extreme responses. On the latter, the paper develops efficient Karhunen-Loeve representations of wind and wave loading that can be combined with inexpensive probabilistic methods to compute fragility. The framework was demonstrated using a representative scenario of a 5 MW OWT installed in clay. Non-linear foundation response was captured by a dynamic 3D finite element model. Fragility curves were generated using subset simulation for storms with return periods (RPs) from 1 to 100 years. Fragility during extreme storms (with 50- and 100-year RPs) was significantly higher than storms with RPs of 10 years or less.
Author(s): Charlton TS, Rouainia M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Renewable Energy
Year: 2022
Volume: 182
Pages: 1126-1140
Print publication date: 01/01/2022
Online publication date: 05/11/2021
Acceptance date: 29/10/2021
Date deposited: 14/12/2021
ISSN (print): 0960-1481
ISSN (electronic): 1879-0682
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2021.10.092
DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.10.092
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