VIPile – Influence of vibration parameters on the installation and load-bearing behaviour of monopiles

The results of the first two rounds of auctions for German offshore wind farms with commissioning from 2021 to 2025 illustrate the necessity of exploiting further cost reduction potentials in order to realise these future projects within the targeted cost ranges. One possibility is the use of vibratory pile driving as an environmentally friendly and cost-effective construction method for the realisation of further expansion plans for offshore wind energy in Germany. The VIPile project pursues the overall goal of developing validated simulation models for predicting the load-bearing behaviour of vibrated monopile foundations by means of large-scale experiments and numerical simulations. This aims at enabling an economic evaluation and reducing the corresponding risks during project realisations. In addition, a simplified, less computationally intensive, linearized soil-structure interaction model will be developed, which can be integrated into fully coupled aero-elastic wind turbine simulations. This simplified model will be derived from the previously developed detailed models and validated with the help of dynamic measurements. The focus of the ISD is on the simplified soil-structure interaction model.