Instrumentation and monitoring of piles and pile tenmplate

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Offshore wind turbines differ significantly from the large offshore installations for the exploitation of oil and gas: the foundations for wind turbines on a wind energy farm are small in base area, many turbines are to be installed over a large area, there is usually very limited site-specific geotechnical data available at the location of each turbine, the loads system imposed by the wind, current and sea waves are much more complex. Because the uncertainties in pile design methods, pile load tests and instrumentation of the piles are often required. A recent development is that the piles are pre-installed with a template and then the turbine installed through the template and then the template is reused for the next turbines. In the case of the template, the instrumentation is especially crucial for wind turbines over wide areas of several km2. This project looks into the instrumentation and monitoring of monopiled and multi-piled offshore wind turbines on large wind farm areas, and in particular where a template is reused for pre-pile installation. The project addresses the piled type of foundation for offshore wind turbines and develops novel approaches for (1) the instrumentation and data acquisition for OWT piles, (2) the monitoring program for full scale piles, installation templates and test piles and (3) the metrology systems for pre-piling operations.