A simple continuum approach to predict the drained pull-out response of piles for offshore wind turbines

The article presents a continuum approach to predict the response of pile foundations for jacket-supported offshore wind turbines. Tensile loading conditions are examined, which may be critical for piles used in combination with this structure type, generally adopted to exploit wind energy in intermediate water depths. The approach is developed to guarantee a simple implementation with a limited number of input data easily attainable from cone penetration tests and laboratory tests, and to ensure computational cost effectiveness. Data from technical-scale tests on open-ended steel piles driven in dense sand and subjected to drained pull-out are used to assess the performance of the approach. The results are shown to be accurate, approximating rather closely the experimental load displacement curves. The accuracy of the approach is also compared to that obtained with a recently proposed design method, to investigate the predictive capacity of the approach and its potential to support preliminary design activities.