Structural safety of offshore wind turbines: Present state of knowledge and future challenges

• Published in: Ocean engineering 2024-10, Vol.309, p.118383, Article 118383
• Main Authors: Sahu, Subrat Kumar, Kumar, Vikash, Chandra Dutta, Sekhar, Sarkar, Rajib, Bhattacharya, Subhamoy, Debnath, Pranoy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Monopile foundation; Offshore wind turbine; Soil structure interaction; Structural safety
• ISSN: 0029-8018; 1873-5258
• DOI: 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2024.118383

Numerous countries, such as the US, UK, and China, have rapidly expanding industries and are prioritizing the development of renewable energy by offshore wind turbines. The safe operation and maintenance of such slender structures having a large mass at top depends on their response against critical environmental loadings and seismic loadings in seismic prone areas. The critical aspects in designing such structure are discussed in brief that includes fixing natural frequency, site selection, load analysis, seismic considerations, design specifications, and standards used. The major geotechnical concerns such as soil-structure interaction, soil-liquefaction, scouring, and development of negative skin friction are well discussed. The issue of damping from various sources, structural health monitoring, and aeroelastic analysis are well discussed, and the necessity of their incorporation is highlighted. The article addresses the creation of various computational models and experimental studies, as well as the key findings. Further, this study makes an effort to propose such a model to incorporate all the parameters from the real field scenario to have an idea about various parameters and their effect on the response of the offshore wind turbine structure by making design iterations, if possible, in a simplified way. •Wind turbine is a source of green energy with out any side effect.•Safety of this structure has received relatively little attention.•The present paper provides a thorough literature survey and future challenges to be faced in this area.•The study focuses on both the aspects of modelling and loading.•At the end, immediate future needs of the studies are identified.