Small-scale Testing of Bucket Foundations in Sand

For offshore foundation structures, the loads are of varying nature both in magnitude and duration. For the bucket foundation the dissipation of the pore pressure is highly relevant since it greatly affects the strength of the structure. The build up of pore pressures with varying loading rate is therefore a highly relevant research subject. In computational models, e.g. FE-models, normally either a drained or an undrained behaviour is assumed. In real life, the behaviour is partially drained, which calls for a time-dependent model. Especially, the tracking of pore pressures in and around the bucket skirt will provide valuable information of the quasi-static behaviour. For a number of small-scale tests performed in the laboratory at Aalborg University, a bucket foundation will be loaded with varying velocity to investigate the dissipation and general behaviour of bucket foundations used as offshore support structures for wind turbines.