Modular Jacket Concepts for Offshore Wind Farms

The EU-funded research project JABACO aimed at developing modular jacket concepts composed by pre-fabricated steel elements with the intention to lower the cost of energy in offshore wind farms in European waters. At Grid Engineers, we served as the geotechnical engineers expert of the consortium with the role to analyze the response of the proposed soil-foundation-wind-turbine systems taking into consideration adverse loading conditions (e.g. seismic loading, extreme wave etc) and provide easy-to-implement design charts for the preliminary dimensioning of their sea-bed foundations. Our research demonstrated the great potential of suction-caissons as an alternative foundation solutions, indicated alarming loading conditions that should be taken into consideration in the foundation design and proposed a simplified methodology to include such effects in the design process.

Client: European fund for coal and steel

Publications

Gelagoti F., Kourkoulis R., Georgiou I., Karamanos S., (2019), “Soil-Structure Interaction Effects in Offshore Wind Support Structures Under Seismic Loading”, Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, 141(6)

Gelagoti F, Georgiou I, Kourkoulis R, Gazetas G (2018), “Non-linear Stiffness and Capacity of Suction Caissons for Offshore Wind-turbines”, Ocean Engineering, Vol.170, pp. 445-465

Kourkoulis R., Lekkakis P., Gelagoti F., Kaynia A. (2013), “Suction caisson foundations for offshore wind turbines subjected to wave and earthquake loading: effect of soil–foundation interface”, Géotechnique, Vol. 63, pp.1-15.

Gelagoti F., Lekkakis P., Kourkoulis R. and Gazetas G., (2015). “Estimation of Elastic and Non-linear Stiffness Coefficients for Suction Caisson Foundations”, Proceedings of the XVI ECSMGE, Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development, September, Edinburgh, UK.