Probabilistic failure envelopes of tripod bucket-supported offshore wind turbines in spatially variable clay based on a novel continuous method

Marine geologic conditions play key roles in offshore geotechnical preliminary design and construction decisions. Tripod bucket foundations are considered promising geotechnical foundations for offshore engineering. Their bearing characteristics are often determined based on tripod foundation system failure modes in uniform clay without considering spatially variable soil properties. Therefore, this study investigates the combined bearing capacity of tripod bucket foundations in spatially variable clay based on comprehensive finite element analysis with Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) using a novel simplified modified swipe (SMS) method considering the effects of bucket spacing and foundation skirt length. The SMS method can directly represent the ultimate combined bearing capacity of the whole space efficiently and accurately. The results show that a reduced bucket spacing or increased skirt length changes the failure mode of the foundation from independent caisson failure to global failure. Moreover, the spatial variation in soil leads to an asymmetric failure mode, which is more remarkable for foundations with small bucket group effects. An independent safety factor design approach is adopted to represent failure envelopes with different recurrence probabilities, which should be cost-effective, especially for foundations sensitive to soil variability. Finally, an application based on a convex polynomial optimization strategy for representing failure envelopes is demonstrated.