Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17

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Computers and Geotechnics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compgeo

Research Paper

Wind-induced dynamic amplification effects on the shallow foundation

of a horizontal-axis wind turbine
Qian-Feng Gao a,b, Hui Dong b,c,⇑, Zong-Wei Deng d, Yi-Yue Ma e
a
Laboratoire d’Etude des Microstructures et de Mécanique des Matériaux, UMR CNRS 7239, Université de Lorraine, Ile du Saulcy, 57045 Metz Cedex 01, France
b
Hunan Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Engineering Safety, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China
c
College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China
d
College of Civil Engineering, Hunan City University, Yiyang 413000, China
e
Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Wind loads are random variables, which induce significantly greater responses in structures than do sta-
Received 11 September 2016 tic loads. We develop a finite-infinite element model of a 2 MW wind turbine using ABAQUS and then
Received in revised form 30 January 2017 verify it with in situ data. The adopted dynamic constitutive model of the soil is based on the
Accepted 1 March 2017
Davidenkov skeleton curve. The results demonstrate that the dynamic amplification factors (DAFs)
strongly depend on wind speed and spatial position. Considerable values of the DAFs, ground accelera-
tion, and ground velocity are observed, suggesting that the responses of the shallow foundation of a wind
Keywords:
turbine are affected by dynamic wind loads.
Dynamic responses
Dynamic amplification factors
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Wind turbine
Shallow foundation
Random wind

1. Introduction dynamic characteristics of the soil. As a result, the need to evaluate

dynamic amplification effects may arise in properly assessing the
Wind energy, because of its clean, safe and sustainable nature, safety and stability of a shallow foundation for a wind turbine rest-
is now playing an important role as a source of power [1]. Recently, ing on heterogeneous residual soil.
new wind farms are increasingly being installed in mountainous Research on the dynamic responses of shallow foundations has
and hilly regions in many countries as a strategy for narrowing undergone considerable development during the past decades,
the regional energy disparity. Unlike building structures, a wind with most attention being focused on seismic analyses [5–7]. How-
turbine must withstand great horizontal wind forces and ever, the response of a shallow foundation subjected to vibrations
moments, which account for a large proportion of its total load from the superstructure is different because the stress waves prop-
[2]. Wind loads are highly random variables that can be transmit- agate in the opposite direction with respect to seismic waves and
ted to the foundation and the subsoil, producing considerable the inertial mass of the soil becomes less important. To date, vari-
vibrations and increased stresses, strains and deformations ous methods have been applied to analyze the vibration responses
therein. Thus, the shallow foundations that are often preferred of shallow foundations. Al-Homoud and Al-Maaitah [8] conducted
for onshore wind turbine must show satisfactory performance in a series of forced vertical vibration tests on shallow foundations
resisting dynamic loads. In many codes [3,4], the pseudo-static resting on sand. Their results showed that an increase in natural
approach is used to address structural dynamics problems related frequency and a reduction in amplitude occur with increasing
to wind loads. This method considers only the ultimate state and embedment depth, degree of saturation and footing base area.
neglects the variation in soil properties (i.e., soil stiffness, shear They also found that a circular foundation results in lower dynamic
strength, bearing capacity, etc.) under dynamic loading. Good response values compared with other types of foundations. Pasten
knowledge of the dynamic amplification level and the zone of et al. [9] proposed a numerical scheme for analyzing dynamic
influence can help to determine if it is necessary to consider the responses under repetitive vertical loads. They reported that the
vertical settlement, horizontal displacement, footing rotation, and
⇑ Corresponding author at: College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Xiangtan stress redistribution within the soil mass evolve as the number
University, Xiangtan 411105, China. of load cycles increases. Displacements and rotation become more
E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Dong).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compgeo.2017.03.003
0266-352X/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
10 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17

pronounced as the cyclic load amplitude increases. Chen et al. [10] Infinite elements based on the previous work by Lysmer and
performed dimensionless parametric analyses to investigate the Kuhlemeyer [15] are used for the bottom and the surrounding
dynamic responses of soil-foundation systems subjected to har- boundaries to represent the boundary conditions at infinity; refer
monic horizontal forces and rocking moments. to Fu and Zheng [16]. The nodes at the bottom boundary of the
Nevertheless, only a few related works have been reported in finite element model are fully fixed in both the vertical and hori-
the field of wind turbines. Harte et al. [11] and Taddei et al. [12] zontal directions, and the nodes at the surrounding boundary of
studied the effects of soil-structure interaction on the dynamic the finite element model are fixed in the horizontal direction. Cou-
behavior of shallow foundations for wind turbines, and they both lomb’s friction law with a friction coefficient of 0.35 is applied to
reported that the soil-structure interaction affects the wind turbine simulate the tangential behavior between the foundation and the
response. The latter further noted that for wind turbine footings, subsoil. The contact in the normal direction at the interface
the mass and the geometry do not noticeably affect the dynamic between them is considered to be a hard contact [17]. The mesh
response, whereas the relative stiffness of the structure and soil tie constraint provided in ABAQUS is adopted to connect the
plays an important role. Based on field tests, Currie et al. [13] foundation to the foundation ring and the foundation ring to the
examined the dynamic behaviors of the embedded ring of a con- tower.
crete foundation for a wind turbine under various working condi- The reinforced concrete is modeled as an isotropic elastic mate-
tions. More recently, Madaschi et al. [14] conducted experimental rial with a mass density of 2500 kg/m3, an elastic modulus of
tests on the dynamic behavior of the shallow square foundation of 40 GPa, and a Poisson’s ratio of 0.25. The steel is regarded as
a full-scale 11 kW wind turbine under the rocking motion of the elastic-perfectly plastic. Its mass density is 7850 kg/m3, its elastic
tower. They observed that the vibration of the wind turbine tower modulus is 205 GPa, its Poisson’s ratio is 0.3, and its yield stress
induces a sort of forced, damped harmonic excitation in the shal- is 235 MPa. The model adopted to describe the dynamic behavior
low foundation. However, most of these studies on shallow foun- of the soil will be presented in detail in the next section.
dations for wind turbines and the corresponding subsoil went no
further than the analysis of the dynamic responses and gave little 2.2. Dynamic constitutive model of the soil
attention to wind-induced dynamic amplification effects, which
are of primary interest to engineers. A nonlinear visco-elastic constitutive model, which was devel-
The purpose of the present research is to examine the magni- oped based on the Davidenkov skeleton curve, is utilized to charac-
tude of the dynamic impact of random wind loads on the shallow terize the behavior of soil subjected to dynamic loads. Here, this
foundation and subsoil of a mountain wind turbine and the size of model and the parameters employed are briefly summarized. Fur-
the influence zone. To that end, a series of numerical calculations is ther details about the model can be found elsewhere [18–22].
conducted using the finite element code ABAQUS. A dynamic con- The Davidenkov skeleton curve is expressed as follows:
stitutive model based on the Davidenkov skeleton curve is
sðcÞ ¼ Gc ¼ Gmax c½1  HðcÞ; ð1Þ
employed to characterize the dynamic behaviors of the soil. After
the validation of the adopted numerical model against in situ test with
results, the contact-pressure-based dynamic amplification factor " #a
(DAF), the soil-stress-based DAF and the foundation-settlement- ðc=c0 Þ2b
HðcÞ ¼ ; ð2Þ
based DAF are evaluated under different wind speed conditions. 1 þ ðc=c0 Þ2b
The accelerations and velocities at the ground surface that are
where Gmax is the maximum shear modulus, c is the shear strain,
induced by dynamic wind loads are also analyzed.
and a, b and c0 are the parameters related to the dynamic behavior
of the soil.
2. Modeling of a wind turbine with a shallow foundation According to Mashing’s law, the hysteresis loop in terms of the
octahedral stress soct and the octahedral strain coct based on the
2.1. Numerical model Davidenkov skeleton curve can be written as follows:
  
c  c 
A typical 2 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine, of the type that is soct ¼ soct;c þ Gmax ðcoct  coct;c Þ 1  H  oct oct;c  ; ð3Þ
commonly installed in the central and southern mountainous areas 2
of China, is studied in this paper. Its key parameters are summa- where soct,c and coct,c are the shear stress amplitude and the shear
rized in Table 1. Since a wind turbine can be considered to be sym- strain amplitude, respectively, corresponding to the turning points
metric, only a half model is simulated using the finite element for unloading and reloading in the hysteresis loop of the octahedral
software ABAQUS, as shown in Fig. 1. The three-dimensional model stress soct and the octahedral strain coct (see Fig. 2).
essentially consists of four parts: the tower, the foundation ring, Rewriting Eq. (3) in incremental form yields the following:
the foundation, and the subsoil. The nacelle and rotor are modeled  
as point masses (i.e., m1 and m2) to consider their inertial effects.
tþDt
soct ¼ stoct þ GtþDt coct
tþDt
 ctoct ; ð4Þ
where for the initial loading stage,
Table 1
 " ! #
@ s
Key parameters of a 2 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine.
tþDt 2ab
G ¼  ¼ Gmax 1  1 þ Hðjcoct jÞ ; ð5Þ
Parameter Value @ c tþDt 1 þ jcoct =c0 j2b
Rotor diameter, Drotor 93.4 m
Hub height, Hhub 80 m and for the unloading and reloading stages,
Cut-in wind speed, vin 3 m/s 
Rated wind speed, vr 11 m/s @ s
GtþDt ¼
Cut-out wind speed, vout 25 m/s @ ctþDt
Rated rotor speed, xr 12.3 r/min " !  #
Nacelle mass, m1 80.0 t 2ab coct  coct;c 
¼ Gmax 1 1þ 
H   ;
Rotor mass, m2 48.5 t 
Number of blades, N 3 1 þ jðcoct  coct;c Þ=2j2b 2
Blade mass, m3 9.0 t ð6Þ
 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17 11

Fig. 1. Study case: a 2 MW horizontal-axis wind turbine under random wind loads.

load acting on the tower, Ftower(t). The rotor wind load Fhub(t) is cal-
culated from the following expression [23,24]:
1
F hub ðtÞ ¼ C T ðkÞAqV 2hub ðtÞ; ð7Þ
2
where CT(k) is the drag coefficient, A is the area swept by the wind
rotor, q is the mass density of the air, and Vhub(t) is the wind speed
at the height of the hub.
The wind speed Vz(t) at a height z can be further broken down
into the mean wind speed and the fluctuating wind speed:

V z ðtÞ ¼ v z þ v z ðtÞ; ð8Þ

The mean wind speed v  z is considered to be constant. The fluc-
tuating wind speed vz(t) can be simulated using the harmonic
superposition method or the linear filtering method [25]. In this
paper, the Kaimal spectrum is adopted as the target spectrum for
the simulation of fluctuating wind speed; this spectrum can be
represented as follows [26,27]:

4r2v L=v z
SðnÞ ¼ ; ð9Þ
Fig. 2. Dynamic shear stress-strain hysteresis curves for the soil. ð1 þ 6nL=v z Þ5=3

where S is the power spectrum of the wind speed, n is the fluctuat-

The dynamic constitutive model for the soil is implemented in ing frequency, rv is the standard deviation of the wind speed, and L
the ABAQUS software as a user-defined material using the UMAT is the integral length scale parameter.
user subroutine. The model parameters are given in Table 2. The tower wind load Ftower(t) is calculated as follows [28,29]:
1
2.3. Numerical modeling of dynamic wind loads F tower ðtÞ ¼ C s Az qV 2z ðtÞ; ð10Þ
2
Since this work primarily concentrates on the influence of ran- where Cs is the shape coefficient and Az is the windward area of the
dom along-wind loads on wind turbine foundations, the across- tower.
wind loads and torsional wind loads are assumed to be negligible. The simulated wind speed is used to calculate the wind loads
The total horizontal wind force Fh(t) consists of two components, acting on the wind turbine. The rotor wind load Fhub(t) correspond-
i.e., the wind load acting on the wind rotor, Fhub(t), and the wind ing to v
 hub = 8 m/s is presented in Fig. 1.

Table 2
Physical and mechanical properties of the residual soil.

Mass density q/g cm3 Water content w/% Internal friction angle u/° Cohesive strength c/kPa Poisson’s ratio t Model parameters
Gmax/MPa a b c0/104
2.03 25–45 23.2 17.6 0.33 83.6 1.20 0.35 2.54
12 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17

Table 3
Comparisons between the numerical results and the measured data for the static responses.

Direction Tower vertical strain Contact pressure

6 6
Measured value/10 Simulated value/10 Difference/% Measured value/106 Simulated value/106 Difference/%
0° 43.1 46.5 7.9 61.0 52.1 14.6
45° 44.0 39.2 10.9 63.3 56.2 11.2
90° 4.6 4.2 8.7 71.7 77.3 7.7
135° 79.5 89.3 12.3 78.9 84.8 7.5
180° 127.3 130.8 2.7 85.2 88.5 3.9
225° 80.8 89.3 10.5 83.0 84.8 2.2
270° 4.5 4.2 6.7 75.1 77.3 2.9
315° 41.0 39.2 4.4 59.8 56.2 6.0

3. Model validation and sensitivity analysis 30% is observed between the measured and numerical fluctuating
responses. One reason for this large difference could be that the
The aforementioned numerical model and methods are time histories of the numerical results and the measured data have
validated against in situ tests performed on the Qiaoshi wind farm different sampling intervals. Indeed, this difference could be
(25°290 06.400 N, 112°400 16.700 E), which is located in Chenzhou, reduced to approximately 15% or less if the same sampling interval
China. The elevation of the Qiaoshi wind farm is 400–600 m, and were to be used. Overall, the ability of the adopted numerical
the landscape is characterized by low hills. The ground surface is model to characterize the dynamic behavior of the shallow founda-
extensively covered with Quaternary residual soils (Table 2). This tion of a wind turbine can be considered acceptable for engineering
wind farm has installed a total of 24 XE96-2000 wind turbines purposes.
(Table 1) produced by the XEMC Windpower Company of China. Moreover, the sensitivities of the dynamic responses and DAFs
We conducted a series of in situ tests on a representative wind tur- to four parameters of the soil model (i.e., Gmax, a, b and c0) were
bine, turbine No. 9, on the wind farm. The tested wind turbine is evaluated at v  hub = 8 m/s. The DAF is a measure that is commonly
supported by a circular spread concrete foundation (Fig. 1) and is used to quantify a dynamic amplification effect and is defined as
situated on a hillside. The monitored tower vertical strains and the ratio of the maximum dynamic response to the static response
foundation contact pressures of the wind turbine are analyzed in [30,31]:
this section. It should be noted that the static responses mentioned
edy;max
hereafter with respect to the measured data are mean values aver- DAF ¼ ; ð11Þ
est
aged over 10 min, whereas the fluctuating responses are the differ-
ences between the total dynamic responses and the static where est is the static response and edy,max is the maximum dynamic
responses. response, which is the sum of the static response and the maximum
Focusing first on the static behaviors, we compare the numeri- fluctuating response.
cal results for the tower vertical strain and contact pressure with The results of the sensitivity analyses are presented in Table 4.
the measured data at v  hub = 8 m/s, as listed in Table 3. The prevail- In this table, we can observe that the variations of these material
ing wind is assumed to blow from 0° to 180°. From Table 3, it can parameters have little influence on the dynamic responses and
be observed that the tower vertical strains at a height of 10 m lie DAFs, with the exception that the variation of Gmax has a visible
between approximately 130  106 and 45  106 for both the impact on the dynamic foundation settlement. Thus, the results,
in situ tests and the numerical simulations. The contact pressures especially the DAFs obtained from the numerical simulation, are
at a position of 2R/3 are between 50 kPa and 90 kPa, and these independent of the input soil parameters.
pressure values are fairly large in the range of directions between
135° and 225°. The differences between the measured data and the
numerical results for the static tower strains and contact pressures 4. Results and discussion of wind-induced dynamic
are within 15%. Figs. 3 and 4 show the time histories of the fluctu- amplification effects
ating vertical strains on the tower and the fluctuating contact pres-
sures at v
 hub = 8 m/s. An amplitude difference (D) of approximately In this section, the DAFs based on contact pressure, soil stress
and foundation settlement are examined considering four different

Fig. 3. The fluctuating vertical strain on the tower at v

 hub = 8 m/s in (a) position #1 and (b) position #2.
 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17 13

Fig. 4. The fluctuating contact pressure at v

 hub = 8 m/s in (a) position #1 and (b) position #2.

Table 4
Sensitivity analysis of the dynamic responses and DAFs to the soil parameters.

Parameter Range Maximum dynamic responses Maximum DAFs

Pc/kPa s/mm DAFcp DAFfs
Gmax/MPa 65–85–105 202–203–204 3.9–3.5–3.1 1.32–1.32–1.31 1.04–1.03–1.03
a 1.10–1.20–1.30 202–203–204 3.5–3.5–3.5 1.31–1.32–1.32 1.03–1.03–1.03
b 0.30–0.35–0.40 203–203–203 3.5–3.5–3.5 1.31–1.32–1.32 1.03–1.03–1.03
c0/104 2.0–2.5–3.0 203–203–204 3.5–3.5–3.5 1.31–1.32–1.32 1.03–1.03–1.03

Notes: Pc is the contact pressure; s is the foundation settlement; DAFcp is the contact-pressure-based DAF; DAFfs is the foundation-settlement-based DAF.

wind speed conditions, i.e., v

 hub = 8 m/s, 11 m/s, 15 m/s and 20 m/s, direction and smaller in the 45° direction. Moreover, the DAFcp
which cover an extensive portion of the observed range of wind values near the edge of the foundation are considerably larger than
speeds in mountainous areas. The acceleration and velocity at those close to the center of the foundation. As the normalized dis-
the ground surface that are caused by dynamic wind loads are also tance r/R increases, the DAFcp values on the upwind side also
analyzed. In the following analyses, the dimensions are normalized increase for all wind speeds. For example, at v  hub = 11 m/s, the
with respect to the external base radius of the foundation to make value of DAFcp in the 45° direction is 1.19 for r/R = 0.9, compared
the results more general. with DAFcp = 1.03 for r/R = 0.3 (see Fig. 6b). By contrast, the radial
distribution of DAFcp on the downwind side exhibits two different
patterns as the normalized distance r/R increases: (i) a sustainable
4.1. Contact-pressure-based dynamic amplification factor (DAFcp)
growth is observed until the maximum is reached near the edge of
the foundation (at v  hub = 15 m/s and 20 m/s) or (ii) an initial
Fig. 5 illustrates the contact pressure contours at v  hub = 8 m/s
increase in DAFcp is followed by a slight decrease and, finally,
and 11 m/s. In both cases, a significant concentration of contact
another rising trend (at v  hub = 8 m/s and 11 m/s). In all studied
pressure is observed near the edge of the foundation, where the
cases, the DAFcp values at the center of the foundation bottom
maximum contact pressures are 203.4 kPa and 231.7 kPa, respec-
are always less than 1.00.
tively. By contrast, the contact pressures on most parts of the foun-
As shown in Fig. 6, DAFcp is strongly dependent on the wind
dation bottom are between 57.5 kPa and 82.5 kPa at v  hub = 8 m/s
speed. The rated wind speed (v  hub = 11 m/s) produces the highest
and in the range of 60.0–97.5 kPa at v  hub = 11 m/s.
DAFcp in both the 0° and 45° directions under normal operating
The DAFcp values are plotted versus the normalized distances
conditions. For instance, the DAFcp value at r/R = 0.3 in the 0°
r/R in Fig. 6. It can be seen that DAFcp is typically larger in the 0°

Fig. 5. Static contact pressure contours at (a) v

 hub = 8 m/s and (b) v
 hub = 11 m/s.
14 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17

Fig. 6. DAFcp values versus the normalized distance r/R in the directions of (a) h = 0° and (b) h = 45°.

Fig. 7. Static vertical stress contour in the soil at v

 hub = 11 m/s (unit: kPa).

Fig. 8. DAFss values versus the normalized embedment depth h/R at (a) r/R = -0.9 and (b) r/R = 0.9.

direction is approximately 1.12 at v  hub = 11 m/s, whereas it is only 4.2. Soil-stress-based dynamic amplification factor (DAFss)
1.08 and 1.05 at v hub = 8 m/s and 20 m/s, respectively. This finding
is understandable because the windward area of the rotor blades The soil vertical stress contour at a wind speed of v
 hub = 11 m/s
varies due to pitch control as the wind speed changes [32]. Conse- is displayed in Fig. 7. The figure shows that the stress in the soil
quently, the maximum dynamic wind loads occur at the rated below the foundation is enlarged because of the existence of the
wind speed. In general, the maximum DAFcp value is approxi- wind turbine and that this enlargement is particularly significant
mately 1.14 (at r/R = 0.9) on the downwind side and can reach under the downwind edge of the foundation.
as high as 1.32 (at r/R = 0.9) on the upwind. Note that the DAFcp Fig. 8 presents the DAFss variations along the normalized
value on the downwind side is of greater significance because embedment depth of the soil, h/R. It can be observed that DAFss
the contact pressure on this side is far greater than that on the rapidly decreases with increasing embedment depth. For example,
upwind side. The observed value of DAFcp is generally large, at v
 hub = 11 m/s, the value of DAFss on the upwind side is approx-
demonstrating a strong influence of random wind loads on the imately 1.14 for h/R = 0, whereas it decreases to 1.02 for h/R = 0.5
contact pressure. (as shown in Fig. 8b). It is important to note that there exists a
 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17 15

Fig. 9. DAFss values versus the normalized distance r/R at (a) h/R = 0.05 and (b) h/R = 0.40.

threshold in terms of the soil embedment depth, such that when uneven settlement of the foundation and subsoil occurs as a result
the soil embedment depth is greater than this threshold, the corre- of the horizontal wind loadings and moments generated by the
sponding DAFss drops to less than 1.01, indicating that the stress in wind and eccentric weights. The maximum settlement is slightly
the soil is no longer affected by dynamic wind loads. As shown in over 3.5 mm, occurring near the downwind edge of the foundation.
Fig. 8, for the four different wind speeds considered here, the soil From an overall perspective, the distribution of DAFfs in the
embedment depth thresholds are 1.5R and 1.0R on the downwind radial direction is quite uniform (see Fig. 11). DAFfs first rises
side (r/R = 0.9) and the upwind side (r/R = 0.9), respectively. and then falls with increasing distance from the center of the foun-
The results presented in Fig. 9 show that the distribution of dation. The maximum value of DAFfs occurs beneath the edge of
DAFss along the normalized distance r/R has a bimodal form. As the foundation on both the downwind and upwind sides, and the
the normalized distance r/R increases, DAFss initially grows to a DAFfs values on the upwind side are, in general, much greater than
peak beneath the edge of the foundation and then rapidly drops those on the downwind side. It can also be observed that DAFfs is
to approximately 1.0 as the normalized distance r/R further less affected by the wind speed on the downwind side, whereas by
increases to 2.0. With regard to the peak value, it appears that the contrast, it is more vulnerable on the upwind side. As the wind
DAFss value on the downwind side is typically greater than that speed increases, DAFfs is characterized by two different variation
on the upwind side. In the case of v  hub = 11 m/s, the DAFss values trends on either side of the rated wind speed. When wind speed
on the downwind side for h = 0.05R are 1.25 and 1.12 at is relatively low compared with the rated value, DAFfs increases
r/R = 1.0 and 0.9, respectively (Fig. 9a), whereas on the upwind as the wind speed grows. Over the rated wind speed, a higher wind
side, the corresponding values are 1.18 at r/R = 1.0 and 1.11 at speed results in a smaller DAFfs value.
r/R = 0.9. Similar to DAFcp, DAFss is also found to be significantly As seen from Fig. 11a, the maximum DAFfs values at an embed-
influenced by the wind speed (Figs. 8–9). Furthermore, when com- ment depth of 0.05R are approximately 1.03, 1.02, and less than
paring Fig. 9a to Fig. 6a, we can observe a good consistency between 1.02 at wind speeds of v  hub = 8 m/s, 11 m/s and 20 m/s, respec-
DAFss and DAFcp, although DAFss is much smaller in value than tively. Furthermore, the maximum DAFfs values at an embedment
DAFcp. It can be inferred from this that the dynamic effect is trans- depth of 0.40R are observed to be less than 1.02 in all cases (as
mitted from the rocking foundation to the subsoil, and the vibra- shown in Fig. 11b). The maximum DAFfs value is no more than
tional energy is then gradually absorbed by the viscous soil. 1.03, suggesting that the DAFfs is insignificant and that the
random-wind-induced dynamic amplification of foundation settle-
ment can be neglected to some degree.
4.3. Foundation-settlement-based dynamic amplification factor
(DAFfs)
4.4. The acceleration and velocity at the ground surface
Fig. 10 displays the foundation settlement contour when the
foundation is subjected to the self-weight of the wind turbine and The resultant acceleration and resultant velocity at the ground
a wind load at the rated wind speed (v hub = 11 m/s). It shows that surface that are induced by dynamic wind loads were calculated.

Fig. 10. Static foundation settlement contour at v

 hub = 11 m/s (unit: mm).
16 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17

Fig. 11. DAFfs values versus the normalized distance r/R at (a) h/R = 0.05 and (b) h/R = 0.40.

Fig. 12. Ground acceleration versus the normalized distance r/R: (a) maximum acceleration and (b) attenuation coefficient da.

After a detailed comparison, we find that the maximum accelera- ground surface is assessed in terms of the attenuation coefficient
tion and velocity on the downwind and upwind sides are, to a good d, which is defined as follows:
approximation, symmetric. Thus, in the following analyses, we pre- ei;max
sent the results for the acceleration and velocity only on the d¼ ; ð12Þ
e0;max
upwind side. As shown in Figs. 12a and 13a, the acceleration and
velocity have their largest values at the rated wind speed where e0,max is the maximum acceleration or velocity at the edge of
(v
 hub = 11 m/s). The maximum acceleration and velocity at the the foundation, i.e., r/R = 1, and ei,max is the maximum acceleration
ground surface are approximately 6.02 mm/s2 and 1.38 mm/s, or velocity at a distance of iR from the edge of the foundation,
respectively. Note that these maximum values are dramatically i.e., r/R = 1 + i.
attenuated with increasing distance from the edge of the founda- The attenuation coefficients of acceleration and velocity are
tion. For instance, for v
 hub = 11 m/s, the maximum acceleration is plotted versus the normalized distance r/R in Figs. 12b and 13b.
6.02 mm/s2 at r/R = 1.0, whereas it reduces to 2.18 m/s2 at The results show that the acceleration and velocity share the same
r/R = 1.5. The attenuation of the acceleration and velocity at the attenuation trend with increasing distance from the edge of the

Fig. 13. Ground velocity versus the normalized distance r/R: (a) maximum velocity and (b) attenuation coefficient dv.
 Q.-F. Gao et al. / Computers and Geotechnics 88 (2017) 9–17 17

foundation. Moreover, it appears that this tendency remains oratory of Geomechanics and Engineering Safety, China [No.
unchanged with the variation of the wind speed. When the dis- 16GES04].
tance from the edge of the foundation increases to 0.7R, the atten-
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dation of China [No. 51108397]; the Natural Science Foundation of [32] Bossanyi EA. Wind turbine control for load reduction. Wind Energy
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