Offshore Structures Exposed to Large Slamming Wave Loads

Abstract

In sloping shallow water regions, waves undergo different nonlinear transformations such as wave shoaling and breaking, due to the nonlinear wave interactions with the seabed. The forces from breaking waves are of concern for offshore structures installed in such regions. The wave breaking forces are large impulsive forces acting for short period of time. The substructures of offshore wind turbines are usually monopile, gravity-based, tripod and jacket����type structures. Due to the simplicity in the design and installation, monopile structures are widely used for supporting offshore wind turbines. However, the operating water depths and turbine capacity of monopile substructures are limited. With the increase in the turbine capacity and use in larger water depths, the offshore wind industry has recently focused on rigid types of substructures, such as jacket����type structures. In order to estimate the slamming forces due to wave breaking on offshore structures, many research studies have been conducted in the past. However, most of these studies were limited to simple structures such as monopiles. The empirical force models by Goda et al. [5] and Wienke and Oumeraci [7] are widely used in the industry to estimate the breaking wave forces on monopile structures. However, in the case of the jacket structures there have not been much research. Due to the complexity of jacket structures, it is more difficult to analyse the wave forces on a jacket compared to a monopile. The empirical force models developed for approximating the slamming forces on monopiles cannot be easily transferred to jacket structures due to the different member sizes and orientations. Moreover, the uncertainties in these empirical models need to be addressed while using them for jacket structures. In order to study breaking wave interactions with a jacket structure, high quality experimental data is required. Within the WaveSlam experiment ([4, 11]) carried out in a joint collaboration with the University of Stavanger, NTNU and the University of Hannover, a large-scale jacket structure of 1:8 scale was tested for a number of relevant breaking wave conditions. According to the author’s knowledge this is the first largescale experiment conducted to estimate the breaking wave forces on a jacket structure. This experimental dataset forms the basis for the present research. [...]