The Flying Wing Anchor® (FWA®) is developed as a sustainable anchor concept for deepwater offshore wind turbines. This new concept combines the advantages of low cost installation of torpedo piles and high efficiency of vertically loaded plate anchors. Anchor is installed mainly in two main steps: initial penetration through free-fall like a torpedo anchor, followed by drag embedment installation like a plate anchor. This paper summarizes a series of 1g model tests performed to assess anchor capacity under pure loading, along with installation performance by free-fall penetration and drag embedment. Scaled model FWA® is tested in clay test bed with constant shear strength profile. Results show FWA® has high capacity under pure in-plane shearing and bearing loading conditions. In the same constant shear strength profile, embedment depths of 2 to 3 times the anchor length are achieved by free-fall penetration tests. Tests performed in soil test beds with the layered soil profile show FWA® also penetrated into stiffer layers, which can be challenging for conventional drag embedded anchors (DEAs). Measured dive trajectories are similar for all initial embedment depths showing a deeper initial embedment by free-fall penetration provides a deeper final embedment depth for the FWA®.
Ying Lai, Hande Gerkus-Harris, Robert B. Gilbert, Jose Eugenio Iturriaga Flores, Asitha I. Senanayake, Yunhan Huang, Aaron S. Bradshaw and Joe R. Giampa
Keywords: Anchors, Scaled model testing, Offshore wind turbines
Publisher: DFI