Towards the Design of Gravity-Based Wind Turbine Foundations | TSpace Repository
Shear fatigue failure of reinforced concrete gravity-based wind turbine foundations is a major concern amongst designers, one that can potentially cause complete collapse of the whole turbine structure. In standard practice, such a failure is guarded against by using more concrete and steel, resulting in additional material and labour costs. Six SFRC and RC large-scale deep concrete beams were constructed and tested monotonically and cyclically in order to compare the contributions of conventional stirrups to the fatigue life of the beam with those of the steel fibres and verify the strain-based fatigue damage models developed at the University of Toronto. Results show that the contribution of the stirrups to the fatigue life of RC deep beams is marginal. The steel fibres, on the other hand, are a superior alternative both in terms of performance (fatigue life) and cost. Analytical results, using finite element analysis, show that the proposed fatigue models are reliable and superior to overly conservative code equations.
