LAUSR

AbstractMonopiles are the most commonly used foundation type for offshore wind turbine (OWT) structures and are characterized by relatively large geometric dimensions, compared with offshore pile foundations typically used in the oil and gas industries. To date, there are no established technical guidelines tailored for the design and analysis of OWT monopiles. This paper first identifies various intrinsic drawbacks involved with the existing design and analysis methodologies as applied to OWT monopiles. Next, a comprehensive experimental program of 1g repeated lateral load tests, performed on a scaled rigid monopile installed in dry sand beds, is presented to investigate its behavior under various loading scenarios. The experimental results provide insights into the various blurry issues in the existing literature related to monopile behavior under long-term repeated lateral loading. Lateral soil resistance profiles were determined from the measured pile bending strain data and found to be markedly depen...