Laboratory testing of shallow skirted foundations in sand

摘要

A topical problem in civil engineering at present is the development of design calculations for wind turbines in the offshore environment. One area where cost-savings can be made is in the design of the foundations for these structures. To this end an experimental research project, as described by Byrne et al (2002), is currently being carried out to develop designs for shallow skirted foundations. This paper presents some preliminary results from the early part of the project. In particular some vertical loading results are presented that could be used for developing installation calculation procedures. The last part of the paper presented some results for determining the ultimate moment capacity of a shallow foundation when the vertical load is very low. These results will contribute to the development of plasticity models that can be used within structural analysis packages.