Crashworthiness of offshore wind turbine jackets based on the continuous element method

Nowadays, the offshore wind industry is expanding fast and many wind farms will be built in the near future. For every new project, a complete collision risk analysis is required. Usually, the crashworthiness of an offshore structure is assessed with nonlinear finite element simulations that provide accurate results but are time-demanding. Such approach is relevant in the final design but is not suitable at pre-design stage for which hundreds or sometimes thousands of collision scenarios have to be investigated. The purpose of this PhD thesis is thus to develop simplified semi-analytical formulations to compute quickly the resistance of an offshore wind turbine jacket impacted by a ship.