ABSTRACT
Offshore wind farms are now built in deeper water and bigger foundations are required to stabilise wind turbines of increasing sizes. Pile driving is the most widespread foundation installation method, but more stringent environmental regulations necessitate costly mitigation methods to reduce underwater noise emissions. The silent piling (push-in) concept presented in this work is composed of a cluster of four piles, progressively installed by successive jacking sequences. During one sequence, each pile is moved downward by 0.5m stroke, while the other piles are used as reaction. This paper presents the results of Discrete Element Method (DEM) of the installation process. This work identifies the main features of the push-in installation method, such as pile interaction, progressive plugging and loss of efficiency as a function of depth. It is shown that the cluster capacity can reach six times the weight of the tool necessary to silently install the piles.
