An improved two-step soil-structure interaction modeling method for dynamical analyses of offshore wind turbines

The detailed modeling of soil-structure interaction is often neglected in simulation codes for offshore wind energy converters. This has several causes: On the one hand, soil models are in general sophisticated and have many degrees of freedom. On the other hand, for very stiff foundations the effect of soil-structure interaction could often be discounted. Therefore, very simple approaches are utilized or the whole structure is assumed to be clamped at the seabed. To improve the consideration of soil-structure interaction, a six-directional, coupled, linear approach is proposed, which contains an implementation of soil-structure interaction matrices in the system matrices of the whole substructure. The aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulation code FAST has been modified for this purpose. Subsequently, a 5 MW offshore wind energy converter with pile foundation is regarded in two examples.