Numerical Investigation of the Pile Installation Process in Clay and Its Influence on the Long-Term Cyclic Lateral Response of Offshore Foundations

In current practice and in most research work, effects of the pile installation process are not considered when analysing the pile response to loading. The effect of the pile installation process in clay is investigated in this paper, using an extended coupled Coupled-Eulerian–Lagrangian method to realistically simulate the complete installation of a (small) monopile used for offshore wind turbines. Following the installation, the pile is subjected to 1 million lateral load cycles due to wind and water waves using the high-cycle accumulation (HCA) model for clay. For most initial conditions studied, neglecting the installation proves to be conservative in terms of pile deformations due to cyclic loading.