Geosciences for offshore wind energy

Our multidisciplinary team deploys smart solutions through all the phases of an offshore wind energy projects interpreting, integrating, and analysing geotechnical, geophysical and metocean data from the seabed and sub-seabed.

Offshore wind turbines should resist several exposures related to destructive environmental conditions (wind, waves, currents) and extreme natural hazards (earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes). Wind turbines deployed in seismically active regions should be designed against seismic hazards in addition to aero- and hydrodynamic loads due to fault displacement, seismic shaking, subsurface liquefaction, submarine landslides, tsunami effects and a combination thereof. Among all the effects, liquefaction has the potential to cause excessive tilting for monopile-supported wind turbines. 

Services

We provide a complete set of services through the entire projecting process of an Offshore Wind Farm considering the geotechnical and geophysical aspects, as well as seismic and fault displacement hazard and metocean analysis. Starting from the reconnaissance survey until the detailed one, our goals are to minimize uncertainty about the ground conditions and maximize the quality of the data restitution. Seismic design is a fundamental step of structural analysis, aimed at enforcing structures subjected to earthquake ground motions. Proper seismic design is critical to ensure structures’ safety and can help to mitigate the effects of seismic loading, so that the facility is not compromised during and after an earthquake. 

Our expertise covers all the aspects of geotechnical analysis and survey support, and we provide services to tackle e.g. fault displacement, liquefaction and submarine landslides related questions at the site. Our services cover also tsunami and wave load related analyses, providing all the necessary analyses for an offshore project. 

We follow international standards for the integrated ground model restitution (ISO 19901-10-E) and defining the inputs for seismic design (DNV-RP-0585). Our ability is that we can enrich the service with many others regarding seismic engineering, metocean consultancy and routes optimization. 

Why RINA 

RINA provides support and services throughout the whole process of planning and establishing an offshore wind farm. You do not have to split your project to various contractors, RINA can entirely support your projects getting and interpreting crucial data about the site conditions and hazards at your site.