RE: Unplugged pile behavior - 3D Model

Dennis Waterman — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:42:54 GMT

Dear George,

There are several things that you could take into account:

1) In reality if the monopile is load axially, the wall of the monopile would "cut" through the soil separating soil either going into the pile or along the outside. In a FEM model you can't "cut" the soil.....and element below the pile will remain below the pile and the wall would get some artificial (numerical) resistance. This can be solved by extending the interface along the monopile a bit further down below the monopile foot. That extension should just have Rinter = 1, but it will force the mesh generator to generate elements either outside or inside the radius of the monopile, which will improve the behaviour.

2) The mesh inside the pile should be sufficiently fine. So let's say the element size should be less than 10% of the diameter of hte pile.

Hopefully this helps,

Dennis Waterman