Offshore wind is a rapidly expanding source of renewable energy, with new developments planned in seismically active regions such as the West coast of North America and South East Asia. These areas often feature loose, liquefiable sands, which pose challenges to the stability of both monopile foundations and their scour protection during an earthquake. Scour protection, typically consisting of graded rock berms placed around the foundation, is essential for longterm turbine performance, preventing localised soil erosion and minimising changes to foundation behaviour. However, the behaviour of rock-scour protection under seismic liquefaction remains poorly understood. Large settlements of the rock berm have been observed in previous studies, yet best practice for designing scour protection in liquefiable soils is still unclear. A deeper understanding of this phenomenon will be key to ensuring the safe and efficient construction and operation of future offshore wind farms in earthquake-prone regions. This paper presents the results of several saturated, dynamic centrifuge tests, comparing the behaviour of scour protection rock berms. The effect of rock size, rock density, foundation soil density and earthquake intensity are explored. Finally, non-dimensional plots are provided to aid both the design of future rock berms and further research in this area.
Xu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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