Breaking Wave Impacts on Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations: Focused Wave Groups and CFD

Extreme wave loads from breaking waves on a monopile foundation are computed within a 3D CFD model. The wave impacts are obtained by application of focused wave groups. For a fixed position of the monopile, the focus location of the wave group is varied to produce impacts with front shapes that varies from early stages of breaking to broken waves. The CFD results for in-line force are compared to load estimates obtained from the Morison equation. The peak loads determined with this simple method are smaller than those of the CFD solution. The computational results appear to suggest that for the impacts of spilling breakers the peak force gets smaller the more developed the breaking is. This is in qualitative agreement with a finding from shallow water impacts on vertical walls: the strongest wave loads are associated with breakers that hit the structure with slightly overturning front. Extensions of the study are discussed.