UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Simplified numerical models to simulate hollow monopile wind turbine foundations

Lopez-Querol, MS; Spyridis, M; Moreta, PJM; Arias-Trujillo, J; (2020) Simplified numerical models to simulate hollow monopile wind turbine foundations. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering , 8 (11) , Article 837. 10.3390/jmse8110837. Green open access

[thumbnail of Lopez-Querol_jmse-08-00837-v2.pdf]
Preview
Text
Lopez-Querol_jmse-08-00837-v2.pdf - Published Version

Download (9MB) | Preview

Abstract

The majority of wind turbine foundations consist of hollow monopiles inserted in the soil, requiring high computational effort to be numerically simulated. Alternative simplified models are very often employed instead. Three-dimensional solid models, in which the hollow structure and pile are substituted by solid cylinders with equivalent properties, are the most extended simplifications. Very few 2D models can be found in the literature due to the challenge of finding suitable equivalent properties and loads to fully represent the 3D nature of the problem. So far, very limited attention has been devoted to the accuracy of both 3D and 2D simplified models under dynamic and even static actions. Thus, in this paper, simplified 3D and 2D solid models are proposed and justified. An elasto-plastic constitutive model with accumulative degradation is used to simulate the soil behaviour, and frictional contact elements are implemented between the soil and pile to model their interaction. These simplified approaches are compared with the full 3D hollow model, under static and cyclic loads. The results demonstrate that the proposed simplified approaches are a reasonable alternative to the 3D hollow model, which allows researchers and designers to drastically reduce the computational effort in the simulations under long term conditions.

Type: Article
Title: Simplified numerical models to simulate hollow monopile wind turbine foundations
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/jmse8110837
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8110837
Language: English
Additional information: © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: wind turbine monopiles; dynamic pile behaviour; soil-structure interaction; contact elements
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10112873
Downloads since deposit
104Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item