Offshore geotechnical engineering - Hydraulic engineering

For all hydraulic engineering projects, whether it be dams or dikes for flood control, or large locks and wharfage, geotechnical questions will be the predominant topic. Difficult boundary conditions are often imposed on the construction of wind turbines. Sea-side locations with complex wind and wave loads place particularly high requirements on foundation structures. GuD is involved in many offshore projects in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, conducting geotechnical surveys, expert appraisals and foundation consulting for their customers.

Foundations for offshore wind turbines and platforms

Our service offering in the spectrums of geotechnics and structural mechanics for foundations and wind-power turbines on land and in offshore projects includes:

Soil exploration at the construction site, as well as periodic and dynamic site soil tests
Professional assessments and foundation consulting
Development of calculation methods for high cyclic loads
Feasibility studies and desktop studies
Geotechnical planning, basic and detailed design of foundation structures like jackets, monopiles, tripods and heavy-duty foundations or suction buckets
Subsoil test reports, expert opinions issued on subsoil and foundations
Designing cyclically loaded foundation systems
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for foundation structures

Offshore client representative

GuD supervises the execution of geotechnical and geophysical studies as well as the installation of foundation elements and substructures as the client representative onboard of exploration and installation vessels.

Flood protection/control

The causes of floods are many and varied. Habitat compression, sealing of surfaces, channelling and climate change can all be reasons. GuD assesses, consults and plans to assist in dam and dike construction as well as underground sealing measures as part of their comprehensive flood control measures.

Hydraulic engineering in construction

GuD offers advice and design in the field of hydraulic civil engineering for marinas, embankments, channel, dam and wharfage construction.

Certification of wind farms and offshore projects

Innenseite Windmühle — Inside a wind-power turbine

HPC Hanseatic Power Cert GmbH, a project certification company and subsidiary of GuD is able to perform project certifications of wind farms and offshore projects from their planning on through their decommissioning phases. The company is accredited according to DIN EN ISO 17065. It certifies the components required by the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie (BSH)):

Wind-power turbines
Foundations and support structures
Transformer substations
Internal cabling of the wind farms
Residential platform
Grid connection

Dynamic pile testing and pile driving studies for offshore foundations

Verification of stability certificates are issued so that wind energy plants will function reliably. Quality assurance includes specialised measuring technology and dynamic testing methods:

Piling feasibility studies
Verification of load capacity for offshore pile foundations with dynamic pile tests
Determination of pile resistance values with dynamic measurements while driving piles
Verification of service life by measuring the steel stress during pile driving
Production monitoring

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