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Abstract:Monopile foundations have been commonly used to support offshore wind turbine generators (WTGs), but this type of foundation encounters economic and technical limitations for larger WTGs in water depths exceeding 30m. Offshore wind farm projects are increasingly turning to alternative multipod foundations (for example tetrapod, jacket and tripods) supported on shallow foundations to reduce the environmental effects of piling noise. However the characteristics of these foundations under dynamic loading or long term cyclic wind turbine loading are not fully understood. This paper summarises the results from a series of small scaled tests (1:100, 1:150 and 1:200) of a complete NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) wind turbine model on three types of foundations: monopiles, symmetric tetrapod and asymmetric tripod. The test bed used consists of either kaolin clay or sand and up to 1.4 million loading cycles were applied. The results showed that the multipod foundations (symmetric or asymmetric) exhibit two closely spaced natural frequencies corresponding to the rocking modes of vibration in two principle axes. Furthermore, the corresponding two spectral peaks change with repeated cycles of loading and they converge for symmetric tetrapods but not for asymmetric tripods. From the fatigue design point of view, the two spectral peaks for multipod foundations broaden the range of frequencies that can be excited by the broadband nature of the environmental loading (wind and wave) thereby impacting the extent of motions. Thus the system lifespan (number of cycles to failure) may effectively increase for symmetric foundations as the two peaks will tend to converge. However, for asymmetric foundations the system life may continue to be affected adversely as the two peaks will not converge. In this sense, designers should prefer symmetric foundations to asymmetric foundations.

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SUMMARY Based on hypotheses derived directly from experimental observations of the triaxial behaviour, a constitutive model for fibre reinforced sands is built in this paper. Both the sand matrix and the fibres obey their own constitutive law, whereas their contributions are superimposed using a volumetric homogenization procedure. The Severn‐Trent sand model, which combines well‐known concepts such as critical state theory, Mohr‐Coulomb like strength criterion, bounding surface plasticity and kinematic hardening, is adopted for the sand matrix. Although the fibres are treated as discrete forces with defined orientation, an equivalent continuum stress for the fibre phase is derived to allow the superposition of effects of sand and fibres. The fibres are considered as purely tensile elements following a linear elastic constitutive rule. The strain in the fibres is expressed as a fraction of the strain in the reinforced sample so that imperfect bonding is assumed at the sand‐fibre interface. Only those fibres oriented within the tensile strain domain of the sample can mobilize tensile stress—the orientation of fibres is one of the key ingredients to capture the anisotropic behaviour of fibre reinforced soil that is observed for triaxial compression and extension loading. A further mechanism of partition of the volume of voids between the fibres and the sand matrix is introduced and shown to be fundamental for the simulation of the volumetric behaviour of fibre‐reinforced soils. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Particle breakage occurs in granular materials with various engineering applications, such as when driving piles (especially where the strength of the particles is low) and in debris ‰ows (where the energy levels are high), and the in‰uence of this breakage on the mechanical behaviour of soils should be given proper consideration in a constitutive model for soils. Particle breakage results in an increase in the number ofˆne particles and broadens the grading of particle sizes, and the primary eŠect of broadening the grading is to lower the critical state line and other characteristics of the volumetric response in the compression plane. In our study, an existing constitutive model, the Severn-Trent sand model, in which the critical state line plays a central role as the locus of asymptotic states, has been extended to include the eŠects of particle breakage. Severn-Trent sand is a frictional hardening Mohr-Coulomb model described within a kinematic hardening, bounding surface framework. The central assumption is that strength is seen as a variable quantity, dependent on the current value of the state parameter (volumetric distance from the critical state line) which varies with changes in density and stress levels. If the critical state line falls as a result of broadening grading, the state parameter tends to increase and the soil feels looser.