Welcome to the fourth and final issue of Maritime Engineering for 2023! This has been a year of change, with the transfer of ownership of our journal from Thomas Telford, the ICE's publishing arm, to Emerald Publishing Ltd. It is a testament to the professionalism of the Maritime Engineering team–Craig Schaper as our Journal Editor, Benjamin Ramster as the Journals Manager of the whole suite of journals, and Laney Bahan in Production–that the change has probably been invisible to you the reader. Although we had initial concerns over possible impact on our mission of communication with the separation from ICE, I'd also like to thank the leadership of Emerald Publishing for their strong support of continuity and ethos, and also for our opportunity for careful expansion as we move to four slightly larger issues for 2024.
In this issue we present three papers. The first of these, Ishtiyak et al. (2023), presents results from an India-Portugal international collaboration in pushing the boundaries of ‘fixed’ offshore wind into deeper waters. There are now an excess of 2,500 wind turbines commissioned in UK waters, the vast majority of which are fixed bottom (pile) structures (Edesess et al., 2018), typically in water depths of less than 30 m. The use of pre-tensioned tethers offers the prospect of extending the opportunity for deployment of fixed offshore wind into deeper waters with less cost impact than previously anticipated. With the impact of inflation on the costs associated with development of new farms, witnessed by the disappointing outcome of the recent UK auction, every contribution to cost reduction is ever more important. This work builds on that presented by the same team (Ishtiyak et al., 2021) and focus the fatigue analysis of a novel offshore wind foundation concept, the Bottom Supported Tension Leg Tower (BSTLT). The BSTLT provides an interesting alternative for intermediate water depths in comparison to the new trends based on XXL monopiles installation. The novel concept shows potential to reduce the installation and transport costs associated to other concepts already existing in the market.
Our second paper, Vatani et al., (2023) results from another international collaboration, this time between Iranian and Portuguese engineers. Here, we move our focus from single, large diameter monopiles to groups of adjacent, usually smaller diameter piles, such as those supporting piers and jetties. Scour at piles is a well-researched phenomenon (Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2018), but the way in which pile proximity influences scour is less well-studied. Here, the authors develop a novel probabilistic approach and apply it to literature studies, with very encouraging results. The development of probabilistic approaches has been a hot topic in scour and scour protection design, given their potential to reduce the uncertainty encompassed in scour phenomena (Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2019).
The final paper in this issue (Hsu et al., 2023) shifts focus from modelling and assessment of direct engineering problems to a topic supporting enhancement of quality in port operations. This international collaboration focuses on issues arising in ports, which are seeing rapid expansion in environments, but have not yet fully developed Health and Safety cultures. This contribution promises to accelerate the promotion of safe working by identifying key risks and therefore supporting prioritisation in the development of mitigation strategies–engineering controls and training.
We are excited to look ahead to 2024. Issue 1 will feature a focus on sustainability in our sector, including a state-of-the-art review and critique. Later in the year, we look forward to presenting a Themed Issue showcasing extended papers arising from some of the most impactful contributions to the ICE's Coasts, Maritime Structures and Breakwaters conference held in Portsmouth in April earlier this year (2023). We are also pleased to announce that our issue page numbers will increase from 45 to 56, enabling us to clear our ‘queue’ while continuing to seek out impactful contributions and offer a clear and timely route to promulgation of these to our beneficiary community. We remain a ‘traditional’ journal, with no publication charges falling on the author, and with a robust, international expert peer review process very much in place.
Finally, thank you for your continued support. Please don't hesitate to contact any of us if you would like to explore informally a possible contribution.
