Professor Gopal Madabhushi of the Geotechnical and Environmental Group has received the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) biennial award for his research on the structural integrity of offshore wind turbines.
Professor Madabhushi was cited for his contributions along with PhD student Aliasger Haiderali and Department of Engineering alumnus Dr Ulas Cilingir, who currently works at Arup in London. The prize was presented at the Indian Geotechnical Conference held in Kakinada, India.
Research on offshore wind farm foundations using both high-gravity centrifuge testing and numerical analysis is currently ongoing in the Geotechnical and Environmental Group. This effort is supported by EPSRC’s grant over the last three years looking at the offshore monopile foundations and their long term performance in clay layers representative of offshore UK.
Similar research was also conducted on monopiles in sandy soils. In both cases weak and strong storm/wave loading was modelled as lateral cyclic loading on the monopiles and the deterioration in the soil stiffness with number of load cycles was investigated. This research is expected to have a major impact on the design and life expectancy of the monopile foundations currently being installed offshore UK and worldwide.
Some of the team’s award-winning research was published in a paper, “Lateral and axial capacity of monopiles for offshore wind turbines”, by the Indian Geotechnical Journal.
The biennial IGS-ONGC prize is presented to the best research carried out in the field of offshore geotechnical and marine engineering and is offered jointly by the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS) and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, India.