Soil-Plate Interface Tests

The planned offshore wind energy (OWE) production in the U.S. has been growing rapidly with targets of 30 GW by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050 and strong support from coastal states. Achieving these targets requires cost-effective and innovative components including foundations, which could cost 14% to 34% of the overall project cost. Offshore wind turbines (OWTs) are commonly supported on large-diameter steel foundations (piles, anchors or suction caissons). Currently the U.S. does not have the capability to fabricate large diameter steel foundations supporting OWTs and instead relies on foundations fabricated abroad. Therefore, a U.S. manufactured foundation system to support renewable OWE infrastructure is required to meet the growing demand. The goal of this project was to develop a domestically fabricated, bio-inspired surface optimized Ultra High-Performance Concrete (UHPC) foundation system to support the growing renewable OWE infrastructure. This project represented the first phase which was focused on material properties, structural capacity of designed UHPC cross-sections, and the effects of surface elements on the soil-pile interaction when subjected to axial loading. The soil-pile interaction was investigated using plates with different designs of surface elements, small-scale piles and larger-scale pile tests subjected to axial loading.