An investigation of different offshore wind turbine jacket support foundation models designed for Central Mediterranean Deep Waters

Gauci, Thomas and Sant, Tonio and Muscat, Martin and Mollicone, Pierluigi and Camilleri, Duncan (2012) An investigation of different offshore wind turbine jacket support foundation models designed for Central Mediterranean Deep Waters. In: OWEMES 2012, Offshore Wind & Other Marine Renewable Energies in Mediterranean & European Seas Conference, 2012-09-05 - 2012-09-07, Hortensia Hall, Conference Centre, “Fiera di Roma”.

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Abstract

The trend for improving the cost effectiveness of offshore wind turbines is to maximise wind turbine size while minimising support structure costs. Minimising the support structure costs in deeper waters is undoubtly more challenging. Studies have shown that the type of foundation model used at the base of the support structure has a significant influence on the overall design result. Two foundation models are studied independently: the pinned foundation and the rigid foundation. The effect of the foundation type on the modeled overall support structure characteristics, are investigated. The objective of this study is to produce an optimised jacket design for a 70 metre water depth in the central Mediterranean region. The study shows that different foundation types influence the internal loads of the individual jacket members and consequently affect the structure’s natural frequencies. The final result shows that the jacket structure with a pinned foundation design was 43.6 tonnes lighter than its rigid counterpart.

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