• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.261-271
• /
• 2016

In the prediction of response of a pile in soil, numerical approaches such as a finite element method are generally applied due to complicate nonlinear behaviors of soils. However, the numerical methods based on the finite elements require heavy efforts in pile and soil modelling and also take long computing time. So their usage is limited especially in the early design stage in which principal dimensions and properties are not specified and tend to vary. On the contrary, theoretical approaches adopting linear approximations for soils are relatively simple and easy to model and take short computing time. Therefore, if they are validated to be reliable, they would be applicable in predicting responses of a pile in soil, particularly in early design stage. In case of wind turbines regarded in this study, it is required to assess their natural frequencies in early stages, and in this simulation the supporting pile inserted in soil could be replaced with a simplified elastic boundary condition at the bottom end of the wind turbine tower. To do this, analysis for a pile in soil is performed in this study to extract the spring constants at the top end of the pile. The pile in soil can be modelled as a beam on elastic spring by assuming that the soils deform within an elastic range. In this study, it is attempted to predict pile deformations and influence factors for lateral loads by means of the beam-on-spring model. As two example supporting structures for wind turbines, mono pile and suction pile models with different diameters are examined by evaluating their influence factors and validated by comparing them with those reported in literature. In addition, the deflection profiles along the depth and spring constants at the top end of the piles are compared to assess their supporting features.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.21 no.6
• /
• pp.218-226
• /
• 2020

An experimental study was conducted on baseline model updating and damage estimation techniques for the health monitoring of offshore wind turbine tripod substructures. First, a procedure for substructure health monitoring was proposed. An initial baseline model for a scaled model of a tripod substructure was established. A baseline model was updated based on the natural frequencies and the mode shapes measured in the healthy state. A training pattern was then generated using the updated baseline model, and the damage was estimated by inputting the modal parameters measured in the damaged state into the trained neural network. The baseline model could be updated reasonably using the effective fixity model. The damage tests were performed, and the damage locations could be estimated reasonably. In addition, the estimated damage severity also increased as the actual damage severity increased. On the other hand, when the damage severity was relatively small, the corresponding damage location was detected, but it was more difficult to identify than the other cases. Further studies on small damage estimation and stiffness reduction quantification will be needed before the presented method can be used effectively for the health monitoring of tripod substructures.