“EXTEND”
Sara Banaei Moghadam
My name is Sara Banaei Moghadam. I majored in civil engineering with a minor in geotechnical engineering. My project in FRONTIErS is about investigating pile ageing for the foundations of offshore wind turbines.
In the FRONTIErS, I have the opportunity to be part of a large community of researchers working on cutting-edge and innovative projects which is great. Also, I will learn skills required for industry, business development, and entrepreneurship as well as soft skills that will help me to become a professional researcher.
DC3 / EXTEND
Extensive testing on physical pile aging effects for capacity
This project will investigate the physical mechanisms influencing pile aging under vertical and lateral loading. A recent joint-industry project has shown that over a period between 100 and 1,000 days after installation by driving, pile capacities increase to double those estimated using industry standard CPT-based design approaches, which could influence the lateral behaviour through distributed moments on large-diameter monopiles. However, there are some notable outliers in the result, e.g. tests performed in the Port of Rotterdam suggest that the increase in pile capacity due to aging is very sensitive to the pile geometry. This project will include full-scale and centrifuge (laboratory) scale load tests on a range of pile geometries.