Lateral loading of tripod foundations in sand

In offshore wind energy conversion projects, foundation costs form a significant portion of the overall cost of offshore wind farms. In this research, alternative foundations for offshore wind energy plants are reviewed and tripod pile foundations are investigated in detail. Tripod pile foundations are becoming important for offshore wind energy conversion systems, due to many advantages offered by tripod piles compared to other traditional foundation types such as monopiles and gravity bases. In this paper, the effects of pile angles and loading directions were examined by both 2D and 3D computer modelling analyses of 1/100 scale laboratory models under cyclic and static loadings. Numerical analysis and test results were compared and mainly a good agreement was observed.