Open Access

Suction buckets are a promising concept for the foundations of offshore wind turbines. During the installation process of a suction bucket, localized fluidization of the granular soil, so-called piping erosion, may lead to installation failure. A 3D fluid-solid coupled micromechanical simulation is presented to study the occurrence of piping. An Euler-Lagrangian coupling employs momentum exchange between the fluid phase and the geometrically resolved particles. We investigate the behavior of the soil for three cases with varying prescribed suction velocities. We observe piping in the case with the highest suction velocity by analyzing the deformation of the granular fabric and monitoring the differential pressure. The grains under the bucket wall-tip show the highest hydraulic gradients and forces at the onset of piping. This approach permits a detailed analysis of piping phenomena and brings novel insights on the triggering conditions for piping failure of suction-aided foundations.

This article presents a solid cohesion model for the simulation of bonded granular assemblies in the frame of 3D discrete element approaches (DEM). A simple viscoplastic cohesion model for 2D geometries is extended to 3D conditions, while its yield criterion is generalized as a hyper-surface in the space of bond solicitations to include torsional moments. The model is then calibrated using experimental results of uniaxial traction at both the microscopic and macroscopic scales with an artificial granular cohesive soil. The paper finally presents some simulated results on the macromechanical sample traction application and briefly discusses the model's current limitations and promising prospects for subsequent works.