Assessment of foundation design for offshore monopiles unprotected against scour

When designing offshore monopiles without scour protection, the stiffness of the foundation will vary with time due to the dependency of the scour depth on current and sea conditions. Currently, design regulations of organizations such as Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recommend the use of the most extreme local scour depth as the design scour depth. This is a conservative approach, because the scour depth depends on the sea conditions and because the equilibrium scour depth is low during moderate to extreme wave loading. In this paper the effect of using expected scour depths when designing for the ultimate limit state and the fatigue limit state is illustrated by means of a desk study.

► The effect of using expected scour depths for ULS and FLS design is illustrated. ► Design of offshore monopiles should include the time variation of scour depth. ► The natural frequency of a monopile supported OWT depends on the scour depth. ► The time variation of scour governs the fatigue life of monopiles.