Observations on the influence of soil profile on the seismic kinematic bending moments of offshore wind turbine monopiles

Abstract

The installed capacity for generation of electric energy from offshore wind power is growing exponentially. At the end of 2015, there were 3230 offshore wind turbines in Europe, 80% of which are founded on monopiles. The expansion in the number of offshore wind turbines may involve the need of installing new wind farms in sites of poorer soil conditions and increasing seismic risk, which puts additional responsibility on the foundation subsystem, which takes a significant part of the total initial investment when setting up new wind farms. These reasons justify the need for analyzing the influence of soil profile on the seismic kinematic bending moment of offshore wind turbine monopiles.