• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.91-98
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• 2012

In this paper, the behavior of offshore wind turbine(OWT) foundation which is modeled by using existing design method and FEM is compared. When the same type of foundation is designed under the same sea and ground condition, the behavior characteristics with each model are compared. As a result, the member forces between apparent fixity and distributed spring type foundation which consider the ground stiffness are not different markedly, while fixed-base type foundation shows relatively lower member forces, which results in smaller safety margin. In other words, considering ground stiffness is reasonable because soil-pile interaction affects significantly on the analysis result. A case study with a monopile shows significant errors between p-y and FEM model at the head and tip of the pile. Also, it shows that the errors at the tip with diameter increase of the pile is larger. Thus, considering ground characteristics and engineering judgment are necessary in practice. A comparison of reliability analysis between tripod and monopile type foundation on the same condition shows larger probability of failure in monopile type and it indicates that the safety margin of monopile type can be lower.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.486-493
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• 2010

Recently, it has been a worldwide issue to develop offshore wind farm based on the past technical experiences of onshore wind turbine installation. In Korea, the government has the wind-energy to be a new-sustainable field of development to bring green-growth in near future and put political and fiscal efforts to support the academic and industrial technical development. Especially, there are much advancement for the fields of turbine, blade, bearing, grid connection, ETC. Correspondingly, technical needs do exist for the offshore foundation installation techniques in geotechnical point of view. Within few years, 2~5MW offshore wind turbines will be constructed at about 30m water depth and it is known that monopiles of D=4~6m are suitable types of foundation. In order to construct offshore wind-turbine foundation, technical developments for drilling machine, design manual, monitoring&maintenance technique are required. This paper presents technical issues with related to offshore wind farm and large diameter monopile in the point of renewable energy development.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.84-90
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• 2017

In this research, a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD), scour characteristics around monopile was grasped and the effect of circular ring type scour protection on reducing protection was assessed. When Torsethaugen(1975) found that the scour area and its depth were coincided quantitatively On the ground of previous findings, after scour was assessed in terms of sea current velocity, we also found that the tendency of maximum scour depth and its width were increased as the sea current velocity was increased. The experiments were performed by attaching ring-circular typed scour protection under the bottom in order to reducing scour around the constructs of monopile type and showed reduced scour approximately by 68.5%. In addition, there were reduction of downward flow and bottom velocities, suggesting that scour protection reduce the effect of downward flow on scour.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.421-430
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• 2013

To predict behaviors of offshore wind turbines which are highly laterally loaded structures and to design them rationally, evaluating the soil-foundation interaction is important. Nowadays, there are many soil modeling methods for structural analysis of general structures subjected to vertical loads, but using the methods without any consideration for design of a monopile foundation is eschewed because it might cause wrong structural design due to the deferent loading state. In this paper, we identify the differences of the member forces and displacements by design methods. The results show that fixed end method is barely suitable for monopile design in terms of checking the serviceability because it underestimate the lateral displacement. Fixed end method and stiffness matrix method underestimate the member forces, whereas virtual fixed end method overestimates them. The results of p-y curve method and coefficient of subgrade reaction method are similar to the results of 3D soil modeling method, and 2D soil modeling method overestimates the displacement and member forces as compared with other methods.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.193-209
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• 2015

For reasons such as global warming, depletion of fossil fuels and the danger of nuclear energy the research and development of renewable energy is actively underway. Wind energy has advantages over another renewable energy in terms of location requirements, energy efficiency and reliability. Nowadays the research and development area is expanded to offshore because it can supply more wind reliability and free from noise pollution. In this study, the monopile offshore wind turbine transportation and installation (T&I) process are investigated. In addition, the schedule and cost for the process are estimated by discrete event simulation. For the simulation, simulation models for various means of T&I are developed. The optimum T&I execution plan with shortest duration and lowest cost can be found by using different mission start day and T&I means.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.79-91
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• 2019

Renewed interest in the long-term pile foundations has been driven by the increase in offshore wind turbine installation to generate renewable energy. A monopile subjected to repetitive loads experiences an evolution of displacements, pile rotation, and stress redistribution along the embedded portion of the pile. However, it is not fully understood how the embedded pile interacts with the surrounding soil elements based on different pile geometries. This study investigates the long-term soil response around offshore monopiles using finite element method. The semi-empirical numerical approach is adopted to account for the fundamental features of volumetric strain (terminal void ratio) and shear strain (shakedown and ratcheting), the strain accumulation rate, and stress obliquity. The model is tested with different strain boundary conditions and stress obliquity by relaxing four model parameters. The parametric study includes pile diameter, embedded length, and moment arm distance from the surface. Numerical results indicate that different pile geometries produce a distinct evolution of lateral displacement and stress. In particular, the repetitive lateral load increases the global lateral load resistance. Further analysis provides insight into the propagation of the shear localization from the pile tip to the ground surface.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.21-31
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• 2014

Recently, the research on renewable energy against depletion of fossil fuel have been actively carried out in the world. Especially, offshore wind turbines are very economical and innovative technology. However, offshore wind turbines experience large base moments due to the wind and wave loading, so the monopile with large diameter needs to be applied. For the economical design of the large diameter pile, it is important to consider the flexibility of the foundation to estimate the maximum moment accurately, based on studies conducted so far. In this paper, the foundation was modeled using the finite element method in order to better describe the large diameter effect of a monopile and the results were compared with those of p-y method. For the examples studied in this paper, the change in maximum moment was insignificant, but the maximum tilt angle from the finite element method was over 14% larger than that of p-y method. Therefore, the finite element approach is recommended to model the flexibility effect of the pile when large tilt angles may cause serviceability issues.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.343-350
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• 2015

Extensive discussion on the optimal types of offshore wind turbine(OWT) among monopile, tripod and jacket in the intermediate depth of water has been actively carried out in worldwide wind turbine industry. Selecting the optimal types of OWT among several substructural types, it is required to consider the economic and technical feasibility including dynamically stable design of a wind turbine system. In this study, the effects of loading levels and uncertainties of soil properties on the natural frequency of OWT have been quantitatively investigated. In conclusion, the natural frequency of monopile-type OWTs has a significant level of uncertainty, hence it is very important to minimize the level of uncertainties in soil properties when the monopile is selected as a foundation for an OWT.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.2401-2409
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• 2013

Reliability analysis with response surface method (RSM) was peformed for a offshore wind turbine (OWT) monopile, which is one of mostly used foundations under 25m seawater depth in the world. The behaviors of a real OWT monopile installed into sandy soils subjected to offshore environmental loads such as wind and wave were analysed using reliability design program (HSRBD) developed in KIOST. Sensitivity analysis of design variables for a OWT monopile with 6m diameter showed that the larger in pile diameter the smaller in probability of failure ($P_f$) of a horizontal deflection and a rotational angle at a pile top, but at a greater than 7m of pile diameter, the reduction rate of $P_f$ was almost constant. It is a necessary that appropriate local design criteria should be designated as soon as possible because there were significant differences on horizontal deflections; $P_f$ was 60% at a minimum criteria 15mm deflection, however, 1.5% $P_f$ when 60mm deflection using 1% of pile diameter from local design criterion standard. Finally, friction angle of sand among many design variables was found most influential design factor in OWT monopile design, and a sensitivity analysis is found an important process to understand which design variables can mostly reduce $P_f$ with a optimum design for maintaining OWT stability.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.184.2-184.2
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• 2010

With growing of wind turbine industry, offshore wind turbine system is getting more attention in recent years. Foundation of the offshore wind turbine plays a key role in stability of whole system. In this work, 5MW NREL reference wind turbine with rated speed of 11.4m/s is used for load calculation. Wind loads and wave loads are evaluated using GH-Bladed (Garard Hassan) and FAST (NREL). Additionally, FE simulation is carried out to investigate the wave effect on the support structure. Meanwhile, this work is trying to systematize and optimize load cases simulation for foundation of wind turbine system.