A Study On Failure Mode And Bearing Capacity Of Offshore Wind Power Bucket Foundation With Wide And Shallow Dimension

Offshore wind power is developing rapidly following the development andutilization of new energy. Compared with onshore wind power, the cost is higher,most of which used for design and construction of the foundation, due to complicatedenvironmental and geological conditions. Bucket foundation is provided with bigadvantages, such as widely applied conditions, simple design and construction andlower cost, in all frequently-used foundations. As a new type of offshore wind turbinefoundation, bucket foundation still has many technological issues to be solved. One ofthose is failure mode and bearing capacity. The deformation of bucket foundation istoo large to keep the whole structure stable in the silt clay or silty sand with lowcompression modulus focused on most southern ocean of our country. Up to now,many studies on the bearing capacity of bucket foundations mainly focus on narrowand deep dimensions, the failure mechanism of bucket foundations wide and shallowdimension is definite. In order to study and analyze the failure mode and load-bearingcharacteristics of bucket foundation with wide and shallow dimension, this articledoes the following works:(1) According to introducing developing status on offshore wind power,application, strengths and weaknesses of various foundations, bucket foundation ismore advancing as offshore wind turbine foundation.(2) Research status of bearing characteristics is summarized from theory, test andFEM methods.(3) Bearing capacity and stability formulas are proposed on the basis of thefailure mode, which provide theoretical bases for the design of bucket foundation withwide and shallow dimension.(4) Failure mode and bearing capacity of bucket foundation with different aspectratio in silty sand are analyzed by FEM that simulates the contact between bucket andsoil to get the failure mode of the foundation and distribution mode of the earthpressure. The comparison between FE and theoretical result demonstrate therationality of both methods.(5) Two and three dimensional failure envelops are obtained accurately by FEMaccording to swipe loading test combined with load control. The results provide theoretical bases for the study on bearing characteristics of bucket foundation withwide and shallow dimension.