Load bearing behavior of bucket foundations in sand
3nd International Symposium on Computational Geomechanics, ComGeo 2013, Krakow, Poland, 21 - 23 August 2013, pp.586-597, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Volume:
- City: Krakow
- Country: Poland
- Page Numbers: pp.586-597
- Dokuz Eylül University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
© 2013 Computational Geomechanics, COMGEO III - Proceedings of the 3nd International Symposium on Computational Geomechanics. All rights reserved.The suction bucket foundation is a relatively new concept for the foundation of offshore wind energy converters. If only one bucket is installed (monopod), the structure is loaded by large horizontal forces and overturning moments. Besides the failure load and the initial stiffness, also the accumulation of head rotations of the foundation structure under cyclic loads has to be considered in the design. The behavior of buckets in sand under monotonic and cyclic horizontal loading is investigated in the paper by means of 3D finite element simulations. An elasto-plastic material law with stress-dependent stiffness approach is used herein. To investigate the behavior of a bucket under cyclic loading, a special numerical scheme originally developed for pile foundations (stiffness degradation method) is applied to the bucket system. The results of a parametric study show that the rate of accumulation of the bucket lid rotation depends on the relative skirt length of the bucket, on the relative density of the sand and also to a certain extent on the load level, i.e. the relative magnitude of the applied load.