MS#05.5 Design for industrialization (manufacturability, installability and supply chain)

F. MOHAMMADI¹, E. GHAFOORI²
¹ Jörss - Blunck - Ordemann GmbH|² Institute for Steel Construction Leibniz University Hannover

Structures, structural integrity, materials

The presentations of the symposium will address the current challenges within the supply chain of the offshore wind industry in order to meet the continuously growing demand to increase power production with renewable energy sources. The success of offshore wind projects is closely tied to the automation process for the fabrication of the monopile which is the most common type of foundation. Demanding geotechnical conditions and larger water depths in combination with constantly increasing turbine sizes result to the limitation for the application of monopiles. The most common alternative, the jacket, poses significant technical and commercial risks. The fabrication process contains significant portions of manual works and a reduced fabrication speed. Another aspect often overseen contains the limitations of the supply chain for the fabrication of high-voltage AC and DC substations that play a significant role in the transmission of the power to the shore.  

The presentations will in particular address the decisive role of technological innovation and provide examples of how these may enable fabricators to increase output and structures to last longer. Future monopile designs will require larger diameters with increasing wall thicknesses. Steel mills and fabricators face the challenge of evolving the technologies for the production of thick steel plates and machinery to fabricate the piles. Fatigue loading becomes an even more crucial aspect in the design and innovative weld improvement technologies like nanolaminates can provide solutions. Additive manufacturing, in particular WAAM, allows different design approaches for jackets and fully automated jacket fabrication which ultimately lead to faster fabrication and reduced risks in the fabrication of the tubular welded connections. Further, modularized fabrication of offshore substations in combination with monopiles as a foundation type may lead to significantly larger output rates which are needed to meet the market demand.