Pile design for X-rotor offshore wind turbine

Abstract

For the foundations of traditional offshore structures in oil and gas industry, the dominant load is in vertical direction. For wind turbines, especially for vertical axis wind turbines, the lateral loads are increased significantly, which makes them the key element of the pile design. The X-rotor offshore wind turbine is a novel concept which is a hybrid of vertical and horizontal axis wind turbines. This paper aims at giving a detailed solution for the pile design of X-rotor type offshore wind turbines based on the existing guidelines and to gain an insight in the influences of the cyclic loads on the pile parameter selection. The pile capacity design and the pile performance design are executed and then the influence of the piles to the natural frequencies of the wind turbine is evaluated.