Abstract

In the face of future climatic and demographic challenges, the development of renewable energies is essential to face environmental challenges. The public works profession is involved in innovation, in the construction of production facilities (power stations, wind farms) and transport (technical galleries, underground and aerial networks), in connection with laboratories and universities. In the framework of the new French technology EOLIFT (for EOlienne LIF Ting) project, allowing the erection to take place at high wind speed without the use of large cranes, numerical analysis of the soil response at a spread footing interface of a very tall onshore wind turbine was conducted using a finite element method. The motivation of this study is to understand the soil structure interaction and the behavior of turbine foundation of this new EOLIFT technology. After presentation of project and geotechnical investigations of the study case in Brazil, it was chosen to study two cases of the superstructure effects on a rigid foundation laid on the soil or buried: (1) with generalized concept of the torsor applied on the foundation, (2) considering a more realistic superstructure representation using structure elements. The results showed the foundation’s depth influence. Finally, Case 2 is better to describe different construction phases of wind turbine.

Keywords: Geotechnical investigation; Soil-structure interaction; Slender structures; Wind turbine foundation; Numerical modelling; Differential settlements