Effect of Breaking Waves on Scour Processes around Circular Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations

Scour and scour protection is a major issue for the construction of offshore wind farms. The engineer can either include the scour in his design or he can place a scour protection on the seabed. The optimal solution is highly dependent on the maximal scour depth an unprotected foundation will experience during its lifetime. Today's design practice has not yet been defined for foundations placed in areas with breaking waves. Some engineers include possible wave breaking in the design by increasing scour depth for current alone. So that the design scour depth is considered to be more than 1.5 times the pile diameter. The present study includes some study of scour processes in physical models as well as in a numerical model, under the influence of breaking and broken waves. Only minor influence on the scour depths are observed for the breaking waves.