Large deformation finite element modelling of offshore foundation installations in sand

PhD student

Debiprasad Bhakta

Supervisors

A/Prof Shiaohuey Chow	Dr Anamitra Roy

Project Start Date: January 2024

Project Details

There has been a recent global thrust to harness energy from cleaner offshore renewable energy sources. Such offshore renewable energy sources, such as offshore wind turbines, wave and tidal energy converters, are supported by offshore foundations that transfer their load to the underlying soil.

Offshore foundations generally consist of monopiles, suction buckets, anchors, screw piles etc. The foundation system adopted depends on the water depth, performance and load carrying capacity required for the offshore structure. In geotechnical practices, the foundations have been generally assumed to be ‘wished-in-place’; computations of capacity and stability are mostly made on in-situ soil parameters. Recent studies and experiments however indicate that the soil state and density changes in the zone of installation. This in turn affects the overall performance and stability of offshore foundations.

The main objective of this project is to investigate the effect of installation processes on the ultimate monotonic capacity and cyclic response for offshore foundations in sands. This would be achieved by developing an advanced finite element analysis technique for modelling large deformation boundary value problems in sand, and subsequently intercomparing the results both qualitatively and quantitatively with centrifuge tests or other physical model tests.