Buckling of monopod bucket foundations—influence of boundary conditions and soil–structure interaction

Using large monopod bucket foundations as an alternative to monopiles for offshore wind turbines offers the potential for large cost savings compared to typical piled foundations. In this paper, numerical simulations are carried out to assess the risk of structural buckling during installation of large-diameter bucket foundations. Since shell structures are generally sensitive to initially imperfect geometries, eigenmode-affine imperfections are introduced in a nonlinear finite-element analysis. The influence of modelling the real lid structure compared to classic boundary conditions is investigated. The effects of including soil restraint and soil–structure interaction on the buckling analysis are also addressed.