Improving the Reliability and Economy of Anchors for Floating Offshore Wind Energy

Offshore wind power is crucial for achieving the net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and improving local energy security. Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), which are secured to the seabed with mooring lines and anchors, are necessary to tap into the more consistent and substantial offshore wind resources available in deeper water. However, the geotechnical design of FOWT anchors is excessively conservative and thus prohibitively expensive due to the high levels of uncertainty that permeate the entire design process, including geotechnical site investigation and anchor capacity prediction models. Sufficient site investigation is crucial to reduce uncertainty in ground conditions and seabed design properties, minimising risk to an acceptable level without being overconservative. However, this is lengthy and costly in offshore settings due to the lack of vessels and labs. Uncertainty in site investigation propagates to anchor design where further uncertainties in anchor capacity prediction models are added, resulting in a heavily overconservative design, unless a statistically robust reliability-based approach can be applied throughout the design process.

This research aims to optimize the effectiveness of site investigation for the geotechnical design of FOWT anchors, resulting in a significant reduction in cost. This will be done by developing a reliability-based risk assessment framework. The uncertainties arising from the site characterisation process and anchor capacity prediction models will be evaluated, respectively. Building on these, a comprehensive reliability-based risk analysis model will be developed for FOWT anchors.

The proposed research will reduce the level of conservatism that needs to be applied in the design process and thus help make FOWTs more affordable and commercially viable. This research will remove a major barrier to the wider deployment of offshore wind energy and contribute towards achieving the net zero carbon emissions target by 2050 and mitigating climate change effects.

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