Performance of Monopile Platforms during Service Life

Mounika Mallela1*, Preethi Sekar1, Satya Kiran Raju Alluri2, Rajesh Katyal3, M. V.
Ramana Murthy2
1National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai
2National Centre for Coastal Research
3National Institute of Wind Energy

*mallela.mounika@niot.res.in

The design of any structure is based on the codal provisions laid based on
years of experience and experiments. However, in cases of marine structures, designs
available are based on the offshore platforms that are constructed with design life of
at least 25 years. For structures that are constructed for a short duration, these
assumptions might be overestimating the loads acting on the structure. In some cases,
there are no standard provisions available for structures situated in Indian
subcontinent. A monopile with design life of 5 years installed in the Gulf of Khambhat
as an observation platform, is taken as case study. Rotation is critical in this location
due to serviceability requirement of the LiDAR.
In this paper, variation in the utilization ratio and serviceability limit are analyzed
for the monopile through the design life of 5 years by studying the effects of marine
growth, scour and corrosion. Scour removes the soil layers and reduces the support
thus increasing the deflection. Due to corrosion, the thickness of the pile keeps
deteriorating and therefore the stiffness of the pile also comes down. The effect of
marine growth is two-fold. The roughness of the pile increases due to marine growth
and the projected area over which wave load is applied is also increased due to
increase in thickness due to marine growth.
From the study, we can see that the development of marine growth is not
gradual for the first one year and attains its maximum at around 3 years. Scour is an
immediate phenomenon and 63% of scour develops in two weeks and by 6 months
almost all scour is developed. Therefore, the scour value is constant for all five years.
The corrosion keeps continuing as the monopile ages. The marine growth has
maximum impact on the utilization ratio and rotation at the end of 5 years. The
combined effect increases the rotation by 15% in the first year but attains an increase
of around 25% in the fifth year. A better understanding on these phenomena will lead
to a much more economical design for structures specially with lesser service life.
 Figure 1 Percentage change in Rotation from the time of installation to life period

Figure 2 Percentage change in Utilisation Ratio from the time of installation to life
period
References:
1. Mitra, S. (1991, January). Marine growth on offshore structures in Indian
offshore waters and removal strategy. In The First International Offshore and
Polar Engineering Conference. International Society of Offshore and Polar
Engineers.
2. Theophanatos, A. (1988). Marine growth and the hydrodynamic loading of
offshore structures.