Probabilistic design and reliability analysis of scour protections for offshore windfarms

Scour protection is an important component of fixed bottom foundations for offshore wind turbines. Depending on the hydrodynamic conditions, they might be indispensable to avoid the structural collapse of the foundation due to scour phenomena. The design of scour protections is typically deterministic, which often results in overestimated mean diameters of the armour layer. Moreover, the design methodologies currently applied do not provide a measure of safety associated with the proposed design. The present research proposes a novel methodology to assess the safety of the protection and to perform the probabilistic design of static and dynamic scour protections. A case study based on Horns Rev. 3 offshore wind farm is used to show how to select the mean stone diameter according to a pre-defined probability of failure of the protection. The results show that a dynamic scour protection could be safely designed with a reduction of the mean stone diameter up to 15 cm, when compared with the statically stable protection.