As offshore wind farms move into ever deeper water, developers are exploring alternatives to the traditional monopile foundation in order to reduce costs and keep the technology competitive within the energy marketplace.
HR Wallingford is helping DONG Energy refine the design of one such alternative – the suction bucket foundation – as part of a research project to determine how these structures interact with, and impact upon, the hydrodynamic conditions and the seabed. The action of waves and currents can lead to erosion of the seabed around wind turbine foundations. This phenomenon, known as scour, poses a risk to the stability of the foundation and, in extreme cases, has the potential to cause structural failure. Although scour is relatively well understood for traditional monopile foundations, the same is not currently true for complex foundation types