Deep Dive Into Offshore Wind Foundations

This comprehensive course delves into the intricacies of offshore wind foundations, providing a deep dive into various foundation types, their design, installation, and maintenance. As offshore wind energy continues to grow, a solid understanding of the foundation systems is essential for industry professionals. This course equips participants with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the complex world of offshore wind foundations effectively.

Who Should Attend:

This course is ideal for professionals working in the offshore wind industry, including wind energy technicians, engineers, project managers, environmental specialists, and safety experts. Researchers, academics, and industry analysts seeking to deepen their understanding of offshore wind foundations will also benefit.

Participants in this deep-dive course will gain the expertise required to assess, design, and manage offshore wind foundations effectively, ensuring the structural integrity and reliability of wind turbines in challenging offshore environments.

Course Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the different offshore wind foundation types and their unique challenges offshore

2. Learn how different offshore wind structures are manufactured and constructed

3. Apply principles of soil, rock, and structural mechanics to offshore wind foundations

4. Learn how to utilize structural and loads & controls design techniques for offshore wind foundations

5. Understand how offshore wind foundations are installed (methods, pre-assessments, vessels) and maintained

Course Overview:

Module 1: Introduction to Offshore Wind

- Offshore wind worldwide

- Project Cycle: Concept selection, FEED, Detailed design, Installation assessment, lifecycle management

- Overview of offshore wind components: cables, foundations, structure, connections, wind turbine generator

Module 2: The offshore Wind Engineering Challenges. Why we need robust foundations?

The offshore Wind Engineering Challenges. Why we need robust foundations?

- Offshore wind engineering challenges

- Design philosophies –what makes offshore wind a unique & challenging environment? E.g. high cyclic loads, mobile seabed, natural frequency, corrosion etc.

- Offshore hazards & geo hazards 

- Location specific soil challenges

Module 3: Introduction to Offshore Wind Foundations and How They work.

- Introduction foundation types: gravity, suction bucket, MP, jacket, pin pile, drilled and grouted. Pros/ cons of each type

- How the foundations work e.g. resistance from push & pull, sliding, rotation, and bearing

- Potential failure modes of foundations (fracture, fatigue, creep and corrosion, bearing failure, sliding, rotation, uplift

Module 4: Introduction to Mechanics of Steel.

- Introduction steel mechanical properties, strength, stiffness and how failure modes (fracture, fatigue, creep and corrosion) develop in steel.

- Manufacturing methods, deformation and materials forming, standards and industrial applications. Joining and welding in metals and composites

- Fatigue life analysis, stress-life and how to develop and use S-N curves and SCFs, fatigue crack initiation. Fracture mechanics: stress analysis of cracks, fracture toughness

 - Corrosion: corrosion prevention and mitigation, embrittlement mechanisms, environmentally assisted crack growth

Module 5: Introduction to Soil & Rock Mechanics

- Introduction to coarse grained and fine-grained soils, their characteristics and behaviour

- Soil and rock strength and stiffness characteristics for offshore wind foundations

- Soil and rock tests site investigation for offshore design.

Module 6: Introduction to Structure Design e.g. jacket design, monopile design, flange design

- Foundation structure types, their characteristics, and relevance to specific project requirements 

- Structural design check examples including strength, fatigue, and modal response (1P, 3P)

- Structural ancillaries: flange design, cable departure design

Module 7: Introduction to Geotechnical Design

- Introduction to soil and rock lateral, axial and bearing resistance for both

shallow and deep foundations

- Introduction to design guidance and codes e.g. DNVGL-ST-0126.

Module 8: Offshore Wind Foundation Installation

- Foundation installation methods: drive (hammer), drilled and grouted, suction

- Installation risks and challenges

- Driveability, drillability assessments

- Noise assessments

Module 9: Future Trends and Innovations

- What are the future challenges for offshore wind (size, noise, installation...)

- Trends and innovative concepts

Module 10: Foundation Maintenance and Monitoring  - Strategies for the ongoing maintenance and structural health of offshore wind foundations 

- Advanced monitoring systems and data analysis for foundation performance 

- Troubleshooting common issues and preventive maintenance measures

- Digital Twin

- Decommissioning 

Course Completion Certificate: Upon completing at least 50% of the course and achieving a minimum score of 50% on a post-course assessment, participants will receive a course certificate valid for three years. This certificate verifies that the essential learning outcomes of the course have been met. While not mandatory, this certification is currently undergoing an accreditation process to further enhance its value, allowing it to be used for job applications, promotions, and professional license renewals, such as the PE (Professional Engineer) license.

Course Instructors:

Ben Andrew

Director, 2H Offshore

Ben has over 17 years of specialist engineering experience in the design and analysis of offshore platforms, foundations, cables, and riser systems. He has held numerous project management and technical leadership roles on a variety of projects from concept through to detailed design based out of our London, Kuala Lumpur and Houston offices.

As one of the UK directors, Ben’s current focus is on the development of our minimum facilities platforms and fixed offshore wind offerings for the European, Middle East and Africa markets. Ben is a graduate of Oxford and Imperial Universities with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, and a Master’s in Quantum Physics.

Yusuf Arikan

Senior Project Manager, 2H Offshore

Yusuf Arikan is a Senior Project Manager at 2H Offshore. He has over 15 years of structural engineering and project management experience in the design and analysis of various offshore structures including hydrodynamics of various floating offshore wind foundations. In recent years, he has been extensively involved in floating offshore wind projects, specifically the coupled assessment of the floater & turbine, and the design and analysis of mooring systems and power cables. Yusuf holds a Bachelor’s degree from Bogazici University, Turkey and a Master’s degree from the University of Houston. He is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in Texas and Project Management Professional (PMP). 

Michael Shaw

Senior Structural Engineer, 2H Offshore

Michael is a Senior Structural Engineer with 2H Offshore working on fixed and floating wind foundation structures. He has worked on the design of monopile and jacket foundations for fixed wind and all primary anchoring types for floating wind. Key areas of technical expertise include global coupled and local structural analysis of both primary and secondary steel structures. Michael holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical and Offshore Engineering, Robert Gordon University, he is also a chartered engineer with IMechE.

David Knights

Senior Project Manager, 2H Offshore

David has over 19 years of industry experience covering a wide range of marine construction projects, both on and offshore. An experienced team leader, he has successfully delivered many projects across the offshore renewables, civil engineering and oil & gas sectors. He has extensive experience throughout project lifecycles and has been responsible for the delivery of various pioneering solutions within the offshore foundations industry. Previous experience includes management of the design and delivery of numerous pre-piling template systems, resulting in the successful installation of nearly 1000 piles for multiple offshore renewable projects. David has a First Class Masters Degree in Civil Engineering and is a Chartered Engineer. 

John Morton

Principal Offshore Geotechnical Engineer, 2H Offshore

John is a Principal Offshore Geotechnical Engineer with 2H offshore working on fixed and floating wind installation. He is well-published in soil mechanics journals and has produced several novel testing methods and theoretical frameworks to improve the assessment of geotechnical strength parameters of the seabed. John holds a PhD degree in Offshore Geotechnics, University of Western Australia and BA BAi (Hons) Civil and Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin. He is also Chartered Engineer, CEng

Owen Pocock

Principal Engineer, 2H Offshore

Owen is a Principal (chartered) Engineer with over ten years’ specialist experience in advanced numerical analysis and structural engineering of offshore wind farms, drilling and production riser systems. Owen’s oil and gas project portfolio covers a range of riser types and systems (rigid and flexible) in deep and shallow water around the globe. He has also performed numerous engineering assessments and package management roles for both fixed-bottom and floating wind farm developments. Owen is experienced in concept, pre-FEED, FEED and Detailed Design for EPCI projects 

Dharmik Vadel

Vice President of Clarus Subsea Integrity Inc, a division of 2H Offshore

Dharmik Vadel is the Vice President of Clarus Subsea Integrity Inc, a division of 2H Offshore within the Acteon Group. He is responsible for Operations and strategic growth initiatives including Digital Innovations for Integrity Management within the Energy Industry.

With over 18 years of experience, Dharmik has managed multi-asset Integrity Management projects covering SURF, pipelines, and moorings systems with specific experience in risk-based IM program development, life extension solutions, and delivering digital data management solutions.

Dharmik holds an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Oklahoma State University, USA and a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India.

Arran Armstrong

Geoconsultancy Technical Manager, 2H Offshore

Arran is 2H’s Geoconsultancy Technical Manager with an extensive career in offshore data acquisition, project management and geo-engineering consultancy. Arran joined the offshore industry as a graduate with RACAL in 2000, during this early time in Arran’s career he was primarily involved with geophysical and geotechnical offshore acquisition projects. After a period of time Arran specialised in geotechnics and geotechnical data acquisition, specifically with heave compensated geotechnical drilling vessels.  In 2011 Arran moved onto Geo-engineering consultancy, applying his operational and technical experience gained as a site investigation contractor to provide clients with the knowledge they need to successfully meet their development design objectives. Now, as 2H’s Geonsultancy Technical Manager, Arran looks after our clients geo-engineering challenges whilst integrating with the other 2H engineering disciplines to provide our clients with holistic, turnkey engineering solutions.

The course outline is subject to change and a detailed agenda will be shared after enrollment.