EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON SCOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCTION BUCKET OFFSHORE WIND TURBINE FOUNDATION

Among implantable offshore wind turbine foundations, monopiles, which are the least expensive to fabricate as a structure, are widely used in Europe and other countries. Although there are many cases where monopiles have been used in Japan, there are also cases where monopiles are not suitable depending on local conditions. Therefore, we focused on the suction bucket foundation, which is expected to reduce costs depending on conditions, and conducted hydraulic model experiments on its scouring characteristics. The results showed that suction buckets reduce the maximum scour depth by about 13% compared to monopiles. The scouring characteristics of the piles in this study, where the pile diameters were in the middle range, were different from those of small- and large-diameter piles. The maximum scouring depth of the suction bucket was found to occur just below the bucket, and it was expected that scouring could be suppressed by installing scour protection around the edge of the bucket.