About the project
Geoscience plays a pivotal role in delivering offshore wind power. The aim of this project is to optimise the characterisation of the seabed over kilometre-scale offshore wind farms at the accuracy required. To do this, the student will investigate novel techniques to correlate geotechnical engineering properties and geophysical parameters.
Offshore wind is a key strategic component for UK’s energy security and for decarbonisation of energy. In April 2022, the British Energy Security Strategy stated the ambitious goal of increasing offshore wind capacity from the current 15 GW to 50 GW by 2030. Currently, it takes 5-10 years for an offshore wind farm to become operational. Six months saving from this time in a UK offshore wind farm by optimizing the ground investigation process, could reduce 2.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in emissions for every 1 GW of wind farm capacity delivered.
All wind turbine foundation and anchor designs require geotechnical parameters, which are currently derived through offshore geotechnical site investigations with in-situ testing and laboratory testing of samples. Current methods have evolved from the offshore hydrocarbons industry and are not fit for purpose to characterise the much larger areas required for offshore wind. Acceleration of offshore wind deployment requires smarter seabed characterization approaches that can bring cost-reduction and minimise environmental impact. The objective is to develop a machine learning approach that is informed by the physical response of the sediments to correlate geophysical and geotechnical parameters across kilometre-scale offshore wind farms. Such a method will both inform requirements of geophysical surveys and enable extraction of geotechnical parameters for engineering design from geophysical data. Ultimately the method will reduce the amount of geotechnical investigation required, and enable flexibility of windfarm layout post survey, in both cases reducing costs, increasing reliability and accelerating offshore wind deployment.
You will also be supervised by organisations other than the University of Southampton, including Joonsang Park from the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute.
