Monopile foundations are the most common substructure type of offshore wind turbines (OWTs). The cost optimization in OWTs design requires the accurate and convenient modelling tools for offshore foundations. For this purpose, a macro-element model, the REDWIN monopile model, has been proposed. The REDWIN model has been proven to be a practical model to reveal the key fea-tures of soil-monopile-structure interaction in OWTs operation, in the integrated dynamic nonlinear time domain analyses in clay dominated soil profile. The REDWIN model is desired to be able to handle different types of soil conditions. In view of this, the validation of the REDWIN model in sandy soil has been presented in this work. The model is validated against 3D Finite Element (FE) analysis results under different loading history and soil drainage conditions. The comparison between the REDWIN model simulation results and 3D FE results proves the accuracy of REDWIN model performance in sand-dominated soil profile. Combing the simulation evidence from this work and the pioneer work in clay-dominated soil profile, the REDWIN model is believed to be a reliable modelling tool for complicated/layered soil domain.
10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)
12. Offshore geotechnics