• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.47-52
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• 2018

The Korea Offshore Wind Power (KOWP) is planning to construct offshore wind energy farms with an overall rated power of 2.5 GW in the south-western coast of the country until 2019. Various types of support structures for offshore wind turbines have been proposed in the past. Nevertheless, in South Korea, jacket structures have in general, been applied as support structures for offshore wind turbines owing to the many accumulated experiences and know-how regarding this kind of support structure. The choice of offshore structure is mainly influenced by site conditions such as seabed soil type and sea environment during installation. In installing jacket sets on the seabed, the mudmat is necessary to maintain the equilibrium of the jacket without the aid of additional devices. Hence, this study proposes the installation of skirt plates underneath the bottom frame of jackets in order to improve the installation stability of jacket structures under rougher sea conditions. To confirm the effect of skirt plates, installation stability analyses considering overturning, sliding and bearing capacity have been performed. From the results, it is shown that jacket structures with skirt plates can contribute to improving the sliding stability of the structures of new wind power farms, while providing economic benefits.