Geotechnical Engineering for Large Infrastructure Projects Such as Offshore Wind Farms

Offshore wind farms are not only major infrastructure projects in themselves, but also tend to require significant investment in related infrastructure such as port facilities. Geotechnical engineering underpins the safe, reliable design and operation of all these infrastructures. Australia must build 41 GW of offshore wind power by 2040 to reach its CO2 emission targets. To put this into context, the installed capacity in 2022 was 64 GW—globally, and there is not a single offshore wind turbine installed in Australia to date. Foundations have grown with the size of offshore wind turbines and are large structures that have to be accommodated at the marshalling port, be ensured to be installed to target depth offshore—often in complex seabed conditions—before withstanding millions of load cycles over typically 30 years of wind turbine operation offshore. This paper focuses on new solutions of rapid pile installation with low acoustic emissions and provides an outlook with a view of Australia’s challenging seabed conditions.