Quantitative integrated ground models have a great potential for cost-efficient site characterization for offshore projects. Whereas most ground models typically focus on developing a generic understanding of the site, quantitative ground models provide a tool to estimate various soil parameters as well as their associated uncertainties, through the full integration of geological, geophysical and geotechnical data. As such, these tools allow assessing risks for different phases of a project in a better way. We will demonstrate a workflow on a set of publicly available data from the Holland Kust Zuid (HKZ) wind farm site. In this study, we use the tip resistance qc from a CPT as an example, but the methodology is equally valid for other parameters. We use two different models to predict the CPT tip resistance; both are simple geometric-geostatistical models that are used to map the geotechnical observations from the boreholes into the complete ground model domain. For both models, the available information about the geology of the area enhances the accuracy of the prediction. We present an unbiased evaluation of the two models and we discuss the implications of these for geotechnical design (e.g., spudcan penetration).
Rasmus T. Klinkvort, Guillaume Sauvin, Carl Fredrik Forsberg and Maarten Vanneste
Keywords: offshore wind, ground modelling, spudcan, scripting
Publisher: DFI