Monopile Foundations for Offshore Wind Turbines

Abstract- Renewable energy has attracted a great deal of
attention among academics, industries and governments all
over the world in recent times. Wind energy has catered to
the increasing demand for pollution-free production of
energy. in a number of countries, offshore wind turbines
are being used to convert the energy from wind over the
oceans to electric energy. Offshore winds flow at higher
speed than onshore winds over a much larger space. More
than fifteen offshore European wind facilities with turbine
ratings of 450 kW to 4 MW exist today in very shallow
waters of 5 to 15 m. Offshore wind turbines are bigger
compared to onshore wind turbines, and the tower heights
are in the range of 60 to 80 m. The costs of building and
maintaining the turbines and transmitting the power back
to shore also increase sharply as the distance from land
increases. Three different types of foundations have been
used generally to support offshore wind mills. They are
gravity based, monopile and torpid foundations.
Monopiles with diameters reaching up to 6 m are used on
most offshore projects. The objective of this paper is to
review the parameters of design of the monopile
foundations for offshore wind turbines. The
environmental loads would be calculated for specific cases.
Keywords: offshore wind energy, monopile foundation, wind
turbines, environmental load.