Numerical investigations for the pile foundation of an offshore wind turbine under transient lateral load

In the frame of the RAVE (Research at Alpha Ventus) research initiative of the German government for the first German offshore wind-farm, a number of experimental and numerical investigations are being carried out to gain knowledge and ensure the safety of future offshore wind-parks (Quell et al., 2007; Cuéllar et al., 2009). In this paper, some details are given concerning a numerical model for the 3D analysis of the offshore pile foundation and some preliminary results are discussed.