• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.5-19
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• 2016

This paper presents the results from three-dimensional finite element (FE) analysis undertaken to provide insight into the lateral behaviors of piled gravity base foundation (GBF) for offshore wind turbine. The piled GBF was originally developed to support the gravity based foundation in very soft clay soil. A GBF is supported by five piles in a cross arrangement to achieve additional vertical bearing capacity. This study considered four different cases including a) single pile, b) three-by-three group pile (with nine piles), c) cross-arrangement group pile (with five piles), and d) piled GBF. All the cases were installed in homogenous soft clay soil with undrained shear strength of 20 kPa. From the numerical results, p-y curves and thus P-multiplier was back-calculated. For the group pile cases, the group effect decreased with increasing the number of piles. Interestingly, for the piled GBF, the P-multipliers showed a unique trend, compared to the group pile cases. This study concluded that the global lateral behaviour of the piled GBF was influenced strongly by the interaction between GBF and contacted soil surface.