IROE researcher, Dr Katherine Kwa invited to attend TC209 Workshop on Geotechnics for Offshore Wind in Japan.

Dr Katherine Kwa, a Royal Academy Engineering Research Fellow, was invited to attend the International Workshop on Geotechnics for Offshore Wind on 5th June 2026 in Yokohama, Japan.

The workshop was organised by the Japanese National Committee of TC209 with the aim to promote the international exchange of knowledge in geotechnics for offshore wind energy, as well as to facilitate interaction among researchers and practitioners from Japan and abroad.

Katherine presented findings from the Supergen ORE Hub Flexible Funded project ‘ Next Gen Anchor Design’ where she has been working with co-investigators Dr Ed Mackay and Dr Ajit Pillai from the University of Exeter, to develop a probabilistic anchor design framework that enables wind and wave conditions to be linked to whole-life anchor loads for floating offshore renewable energy infrastructure applications. The framework harnesses whole-life seabed evolution modelling and probabilistic surrogates for identification of smaller required anchor sizes with known target probabilities of failure.

The work was well received and a good introduction for the aspects of the project that were presented in more detail at the 45th International Ocean Offshore and Arctic Engineering Conference (OMAE 2026) in Tokyo, Japan the following week, which you can find out more about here.