ABSTRACT

Recent research has investigated the cyclic behaviour of piles, but this has generally been limited to a ‘drained’ soil response. Achmus et al. (2008) used cyclic drained triaxial tests on sand to evaluate the cumulative displacements and change in stiffness of the soil-pile system. This approach is more suitable for a case with a large load period; however it is realistic for many windfarm monopile design cases, even in coarse sand where the load period may be just a few seconds and the pile diameter may be 5 m.