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Improved Fatigue Life of Welded Jacket Connections (JaCo)

The JaCo project aims to cut the cost of offshore wind by optimising the design of jacket foundations through improved fatigue standards and validation of faster testing and fabrication methods. 

Jacket foundations are set to become a more dominant design solution, as monopiles are unlikely to be practical for many future offshore wind farms located in deeper water sites and with larger turbines, so through the £2.4m JaCo project we hope to develop a better understanding of fatigue performance by testing full-size jacket nodes made from existing manual and novel automated welding processes. Coupled with improved standards it is estimated that a weight reduction of 10 percent can be achieved if the fatigue resistance (strength) is enhanced by 10-20 percent through optimised design.

Project end date

Started in 2016, it is expected finish in September 2023

Project lead

OCAS

Partners

Leading offshore wind developers Ørsted, EnBW, Equinor, ScottishPower Renewables, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Shell, SSE Renewables and Vattenfall are supporting the project together with funding from the Scottish Government.

Setup under

Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) 

Contact
James Sinfield

James Sinfield, Technology Acceleration Manager
james.sinfield@carbontrust.com