Collaborative Research: Green Foundations for Green Energy

这项研究的动机是启发和促进更可持续的基金会概念的发展，即“绿色”基金会。这项工作正在推进对土壤-结构相互作用的基本理解，为海上风力涡轮机开发一种新的可持续基础概念：飞翼锚。这个锚是一个具有空气动力学效率的带翼飞机形状的钢板。锚的安装无声且高效，利用自由落体通过水柱的重力穿透海床。将风力涡轮机结构连接到锚上的绳索的张力导致锚在使用中俯冲并向水平方向倾斜，从而在极端载荷下最大限度地提高整个机翼表面的可用承载能力。智力上的挑战是(1)模拟土壤在剪切和承载下对基础的阻力，在应变率的数量级范围内，对应于自由落体渗透、线预张拉和最终的风暴载荷；(2)捕捉动态的、完全六自由度的基础运动，因为它在安装和服务期间“飞行”在土壤中。该研究计划包括对飞翼锚在贯入和服役载荷下的比例模型进行综合物理测试，并利用有限元法和先进的本构模型对飞翼锚的三维随时间行为进行数值模拟。它利用美国-爱尔兰研究与发展伙伴关系计划，汇集了一个多学科，多机构的团队，代表了欧洲海上风电开发的最先进技术和美国海上基础的最先进技术。项目合作伙伴包括德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校、罗德岛大学、都柏林大学和贝尔法斯特女王大学。在来自Invest NI和爱尔兰科学基金会的外部资金支持下，美国对该项目的投资比例接近3美元：1美元来自国家科学基金会。这项研究有可能通过开发绿色基础概念来改善海上和陆上广泛应用的基础系统，其中大自然最初通过重力“安装”它，然后通过在役载荷完成“安装”。这项研究旨在降低利用海上风能的经济和环境成本，这是增加可再生能源可用性的关键挑战。这项研究将为研究生和本科生提供跨国家和跨大西洋的教育和研究机会，通过向学生们展示一个新概念的发展，并给他们一个通过模型测试设施亲自检验它的机会，从而培养他们对工程和科学的兴趣，从而使整个社会受益。通过公开展示和研讨会，提高公众对可再生能源前景和挑战的认识。

The motivation for this research is to inspire and facilitate the development of more sustainable foundation concepts, coined "green" foundations. The work is advancing a fundamental understanding of soil-structure interactions to develop a novel and sustainable foundation concept for offshore wind turbines: a Flying Wing Anchor. This anchor is a steel plate in the shape of an aerodynamically efficient winged aircraft. The anchor is installed silently and efficiently using gravity from free fall through the water column and penetration into the sea floor. Tension in the line that attaches the wind turbine structure to the anchor causes the anchor to dive and pitch toward the horizontal in service, maximizing the available holding capacity in bearing over the full wing surface in an extreme load. The intellectual challenges are (1) modeling the resistance of soil against a foundation in shear and bearing over the orders-of-magnitude range of strain rates corresponding to free-fall penetration, line pre-tensioning and ultimately storm loading and (2) capturing the dynamic, fully six-degree-of-freedom movement of a foundation as it "flies" through the soil during installation and service. The research plan comprises a comprehensive approach to physically testing scale models of a Flying Wing Anchor during penetration and in-service loading and numerically modeling the three-dimensional behavior with time of a Flying Wing Anchor with the Finite Element Method (FEM) and advanced constitutive models. It capitalizes on a U.S.-Ireland Research and Development Partnership Program to bring together a multidisciplinary, multiple-institution team that represents the European state-of-the art in offshore wind development and the U.S. state-of-the-art in offshore foundations. The project partners include The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Rhode Island, University College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast. With external funding from Invest NI and Science Foundation Ireland, the U.S. investment in this project is leveraged at a ratio of nearly 3 total dollars for each dollar invested from NSF.This research has the potential to improve foundation systems over a wide range of offshore and onshore applications by developing a green foundation concept, where nature initially "installs" it through gravity and then completes the "installation" through in-service loading. This research aims to reduce the economic and environmental cost of harnessing offshore wind energy, which is a key challenge to increasing the availability of renewable energy. This research will benefit society at large by providing cross-country and cross-Atlantic education and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, by fostering excitement in engineering and science for school children through exposing them to the development of a novel concept and giving them an opportunity to examine it themselves through a model testing facility, and by increasing public awareness of the promises and challenges of renewable energy through public demonstrations and workshops.