Project description
New designs for offshore wind steel anchors unleash capacity and resilience
Floating wind turbines offer enormous potential for harvesting clean energy over deep waters, where 70 % of Europe’s offshore wind resource lies. However, the steel pile anchors that keep them in place are over-engineered, based on conservative design rules borrowed from onshore practice. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the UPCareWind project aims to develop a new design framework that allows much greater mooring line displacement, enabling smaller, cheaper piles without compromising safety and saving billions in steel costs and installation time. Combining advanced physical and numerical modelling, UPCareWind will deliver an openly accessible design tool incorporating resilience to extreme weather, helping accelerate Europe’s transition to carbon neutrality.
Objective
UPCareWind will develop a new framework for pile anchor design to unlock hidden pile resistance and resilience, and to support the acceleration of offshore Floating Wind Turbine (FWT) deployment.
FWT is a key technology for harvesting clean energy over deep water, with thousands of turbines required to meet EU climate neutrality goals, as 70% of the offshore wind technical potential lies in water depths greater than 50 metres. Steel pile anchors are currently the most frequently used in the mooring systems that keep FWTs in place. Current design guidelines define pile resistance as the force measured at a pile head displacement equal to 10% of the diameter (D), based on conservative onshore design guidelines. However, since offshore mooring systems with >100 metre-long mooring lines can tolerate much larger displacements, much higher peak anchor resistance can be unlocked by allowing displacement of >100%D. As a result, smaller piles can be manufactured to provide equivalent design forces, saving billions in steel and installation vessel time.
UPCareWind will combine advanced physical (geotechnical centrifuge) and numerical modelling (Discrete Element Method) to quantify pile peak and post-peak resistances across a wide range of geometrical, loading and soil configurations, establishing a unique and novel database. This database will be used to develop and calibrate a new pile anchor design framework, which will be provided in open access to geotechnical practitioners. The project has dual ambition: (1) to redefine the concept of failure for pile anchors and make it a new design standard, and (2) to embed resilience in design by quantifying residual pile resistance after extreme weather events.
UPCareWind will contribute to unlocking new areas for FWT development, and ultimately to reaching carbon neutrality, aligning with central EU policies such as the EU Green Deal and the Clean Energy for EU Islands initiative.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics mathematical physics
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy wind energy
- natural sciences computer and information sciences computational science
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences oceanography physical oceanography
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics numerical analysis
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
SO17 1BJ SOUTHAMPTON
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.