IROE Chair Susan Gourvenec delivers Tianjin International Scholars’ Program Invited Lecture

Susan Gourvenec delivered an invited lecture “Whole life geotechnical design: Opportunities for offshore design optimization” to an audience of 260 attendees from different Universities across China. The lecture is an annual event of the International Scholars’ Program hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Simulation and Safety, Tianjin University. Tianjin University has its roots as the first modern university in China, founded in 1985 as Peiyang University, and hosted the first Hydraulics Laboratory established in China (1928).

The lecture introduced the philosophical concepts of Whole Life Geotechnical Design, characterised by making the conventional design check i.e. that a design action does not cause a design limit state to be exceeded, but repeatedly throughout the life of the structure or system, rather than just once for the worst case combination of maximum action and minimum resistance or stiffness, as is generally the case for traditional offshore geotechnical design.

Whole life geotechnical design is a critical part of the solution for creating the necessary step change in engineering design practice to enable the necessary efficiencies for meeting our offshore wind targets economically.

Susan went on to outline the theoretical basis underpinning the key stages in whole life geotechnical design, introduced some recently developed macro models to capture whole life geotechnical response, and illustrated the potential impacts on design through various case study examples. Susan closed with outlining the necessary next steps to embed whole life geotechnical design in routine practice.