研究期間：10108~10207;Wind power from offshore wind farms has recently been developed very maturely in Northern European country. Although the wind energy resource in western Taiwan is very abundant, the offshore wind power industry has not been developed. The Western Taiwan coastline is classified to a high earthquake activity zone and the sea bed is deposited with very loose sandy soil that is liquefiable during big earthquakes. The current design code of wind turbine foundation does not give the detailed earthquake resistant design requirements for the support foundations in engineering practices. The mono-pile foundation is suitable to the foundation of wind turbine that is located at Western Taiwan. The loading of an offshore wind turbine is different from the foundations of civil structure like traditional building foundations or bridge foundations. The foundations for an offshore wind turbine are subjected to large moments and small vertical loads at seabed level and the foundations are usually subjected to the strong cyclic loading originating from wind and wave loads on the structure. The situation would be more critical if the part of foundation soil becomes liquefied during big earthquakes. A series of centrifuge shaking table model tests will be conducted to simulate the seismic response of a mono-pile with the same loading conditions as those in the in-situ wind farm and the mono-pile is embedded in liquefiable sandy soil subjected to earthquake loading in the three consecutive projects. Sensors (i.e., strain gauges along the pile, accelerometers, LVDTs and pore water pressure transducers) densely instrumented in the mono-pile, superstructure and surrounding soils will provide valuable information for constructing the p-y curves and examining their evolution at various degrees of liquefaction. The difference of seismic response between the civil structure foundations and the wind turbine foundation would be examined and discussed in detailed. The research results from this project will give the design guidelines of the mono-pile for off-shore wind turbines and be greatly beneficial to the wind energy industry.
