Tidal current turbine technologies have yet to converge on a single design concept, in contrast to wind turbine technologies. As a result, numerous moored and rigid turbine technologies exist for various water depths and tidal currents. Regardless of the technology, turbines must be supported on a foundation in a reliable and practical way. The construction, installation and maintenance of foundation systems form a significant part of the overall life-cycle cost of the tidal energy project. The success of the project depends on accurately predicting and designing the response of the foundation and the interaction with seabed geomaterials. Despite the ongoing growth of geotechnical engineering in foundation system design for residential, transportation, mining and wind energy infrastructures, design methods for tidal current turbine foundations are relatively undeveloped, using the most basic of geotechnical parameters, derived from qualitative geological investigations. Such methods are overly conservative, leading to unnecessarily expensive designs. This project addresses the need for improved design methods in clayey marine sediments, through state-of-the-art numerical approaches, employing advanced large deformation simulation methods coupled with realistic constitutive soil models.

Advanced numerical simulation techniques will model offshore structure-seafloor interactions through appropriate constitutive models of marine sediment response. The project aims to discover the underlying mechanical soil characteristics and processes controlling the bearing capacity of tidal current turbine foundations, and the effect of disturbance in the vicinity of the foundation developed during installation on the bearing capacity.