Concrete Gravity Foundations for Offshore Wind: New Guidelines for Design, Construction & Installation

Mass production of offshore concrete gravity foundations for wind turbines creates an opportunity to follow reliability-based design methods rather than the conventional design, construction and installation practice that has developed from installing one-off structures for the oil & gas industry. A reliability-based approach can deliver more cost-effective foundations whilst still satisfying the annual probability of failure deemed acceptable in turbine foundation design standards.

This paper shows that a lower environment load factor can be adopted now without compromising safety or reliability. The benefits of reliability-based design of foundations can be realised if sufficient good-quality offshore site investigation and sample testing is conducted. Transportation and installation will become more straightforward as knowledge and experience grows through deployment of multiple foundations.