On the resilience of suction bucket foundations under cyclic uplift loading in intermediate soils
On the resilience of suction bucket foundations under cyclic uplift loading in intermediate soils
Suction bucket jackets have been used successfully to support offshore wind turbines, and may become favoured over monopiles as water depths increase. They also provide benefit in terms of low-noise and rapid installation in a wide variety of soil conditions. However, there remains uncertainty about their response when subjected to cyclic uplift loading in intermediate to coarse grained soils and this paper investigates the resilience of suction bucket foundations under sustained monotonic and cyclic uplift loading in intermediate soils. To replicate field drainage conditions of suction bucket foundations in a silty sand, a silt taken from an offshore wind farm site (with water as pore fluid) was used in the centrifuge modelling outlined in this study. The results indicate that suction buckets are resilient under static and average cyclic loading up to the drained resistance, with minimal bucket displacement observed. Sustained uplift load that exceeds the drained uplift resistance of the skirt caused slow extraction of the bucket, with the extraction rate controlled by the flow of pore water from the surrounding soil into the bucket.
Vikram Singh; Phil Watson; Conleth O'loughlin; F. da Silva Pereira
5th International Symposium on Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics (ISFOG2025)
11 - Suction installed foundations and anchors
https://doi.org/10.53243/ISFOG2025-229
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