Underwater Noise Emission Due to Offshore Pile Installation: A Review

Abstract

The growing demand for renewable energy supply stimulates a drastic increase in the deployment rate of offshore wind energy. Offshore wind power generators are usually supported by large foundation piles that are driven into the seabed with hydraulic impact hammers or vibratory devices. The pile installation process, which is key to the construction of every new wind farm, is hindered by a serious by-product: the underwater noise pollution. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art computational methods to predict the underwater noise emission by the installation of foundation piles offshore including the available noise mitigation strategies. Future challenges in the field are identified under the prism of the ever-increasing size of wind turbines and the emerging pile driving technologies.

Measurements and Spatial Distribution Simulation of Impact Pile Driving Underwater Noise Generated During the Construction of Offshore Wind Power Plant Off the Southwest Coast of Korea

“…Several studies reported that the noise level of pile driving noise near the seafloor was generally higher than at the sea surface (Reinhall and Dahl, 2011;Tsouvalas, 2020). However, in our case, which was measured at approximately 640 m from the pile in 2017, the sound exposure level and the peak pressure level were the lowest at 5 m above the seafloor, and rather higher at 3 and 7 m above the seafloor, as shown in Figures 5A,B.…”

“…As onshore wind farms are often accompanied by landscape damage and noise, offshore wind power generation has been considered an attractive alternative. There are several foundation types of offshore wind turbine construction such as monopiles, tripods, steel jackets, suction caisson, gravity-based structure and floating (Sánchez et al, 2019;Tsouvalas, 2020). Among them, processes involving percussive pile driving produce underwater noise with extremely high sound pressure levels.…”

“…Recently, it has been reported that impact pile driving noise may be responsible for negative effects on marine life, including marine mammals (Nehls et al, 2007;Kastelein et al, 2013;Leunissen and Dawson, 2018;Leunissen et al, 2019) and fish (Nedwell et al, 2003;Casper et al, 2013;Bagocius, 2015;Hawkins and Popper, 2017). Several studies have been conducted to investigate the mechanism of impact pile driving noise and its propagation properties (Reinhall and Dahl, 2011;Tsouvalas, 2020). In addition, there have been efforts to present the standards for measurement, analysis, and prediction of the noise and to prepare the criteria for the assessing noise impacts on marine ecosystems (Oestman et al, 2009;Ainslie, 2011;de Jong et al, 2011;Hawkins and Popper, 2014;Robinson et al, 2014;Dahl et al, 2015; International Organization for Standardization [ISO], 2017b; National Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS], 2018; Southall et al, 2019).…”

“…Several efforts have been made to predict the propagation of the impact pile driving noise (e.g., Workshop COMPILE I and II). First-generation models using parabolic equation (PE), normal mode, wavenumber integration and energy fluxbased methods for long-range propagation and finite element and finite difference methods for short-range propagation had relatively good predictions of noise propagation (Reinhall and Dahl, 2011;Zampolli et al, 2013;Fricke and Rolfes, 2015;Schecklman et al, 2015;Lippert et al, 2016;Tsouvalas, 2020). Tsouvalas and Metrikine (2013) proposed a second-generation model that considered the elastic properties of sediments in pile driving acoustics.…”

Decoupled Modelling Approaches for Environmental Interactions with Monopile-Based Offshore Wind Support Structures

“…The increase of installed capacity came along with a general growth in wind turbine size, distance to shore and water depth of the installed and planned wind farms in the last decade. Consequently, researchers and industries had to face and are still facing many challenges regarding design, production, installation, operability, maintenance and decommissioning of these new and bigger offshore wind turbines [3,4].…”