3D finite element analysis of monopiles and its application in offshore wind farm design

The PISA Joint Industry Project has led to significant advances in monopile design, with 3D Finite Element (FE) analysis playing a key role in the development of the method,as well as in its application in practice. This paper presents 3D FE analyses carried out as part of the design process for monopile foundations for an offshore wind farm in the North Sea. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part demonstrates the ability of the adopted constitutive models to describe the soil response for the soils encountered, on the basis of high qualityground investigation campaigns for the site. The second part presents the calibration of the constitutive modelused in the FE analyses to simulate the sands’ response,against the PISA field tests. The third part presentsthe results of the 3D analyses at different monopile locations across the wind farm, in terms of load displacement curvesandstructural forces within the monopiles.