Assessment of the deformation by punching and at the baseof an offshore wind turbine jacket impacted by a ship

Renewable energy production systems are expanding very fast to meet the actual energetic issues. Amongst them, offshore wind is a very promising technology as it provides a nearly constant and high electricity power. However, this growing number of offshore wind turbines increases the collision risk with vessels that needs to be considered during the design phase. Finite elements are widely used and provide accurate results, but are time-demanding, especially when thousands collision scenarios are investigated in a full collision risk analysis.
The authors developed analytical formulations in order to compute quickly the crashworthiness of an offshore wind turbine jacket. From numerical simulations, four deformation modes were identified. The methodology and the main developments performed for two of them, namely the punching and the deformation at the base of the jacket, are presented in this poster. These formulations are then integrated in a general algorithm that includes all four modes to compute the total jacket resistance.