Offshore Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges in Wind, Wave and Tidal Renewable Energy

Dear Colleagues,

The offshore wind, wave and tidal energy sector is booming globally.  Offshore foundations are of vital importance in the development of national offshore infrastructure wind, wave and tidal energy projects due to the growing global demand for offshore renewable energy systems.  From a structural engineering point of view, offshore engineering developments have led to durable and cost-effective construction materials for tidal waves, and reliable anchoring and mooring systems. Nevertheless, the associated cost of offshore foundation systems is commonly estimated at between 20 and 36 percent.  As such, state-of-the-art geotechnical engineering considerations remain of prime importance for all offshore foundation structures and continue to present a wide variety of challenges for practitioners and researchers.

Significant advancements in offshore geotechnical engineering have been made in recent years, due to a range of improvements in numerical modelling techniques, site characterisations and laboratory analyses.  As such, the offshore industry has rapidly expanded, in no small part due to progress made in offshore geotechnics.  This Special Issue is a result of the overwhelming interest in the successful international symposium “Offshore Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges in Wind, Wave and Tidal Renewable Energy” held by the Australian Geomechanics Society’s Tasmania Chapter.  The symposium highlighted the need for a platform whereby additional recent advances in offshore geotechnics for the renewables sector can be published.

The Special Issue invites original submissions and review articles covering recent advances in offshore geotechnical engineering for the renewable energy sector, focusing on research of a theoretical, experimental, and numerical nature.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Geotechnical considerations for offshore anchors and moorings
• Offshore Wind Turbine (OWT) foundations
• Geotechnics for the aquaculture industry
• Seabed characterisation for offshore renewables
• Offshore pipeline geotechnics
• Suction caissons for emerging offshore geotechnical industries
• Finite element or large deformation methods (SPH, MPM, etc.) for offshore geotechnics
• Offshore structure-soil-fluid interactions
• Laboratory analyses of offshore materials
• Offshore geotechnical field conditions

Dr. Ali Tolooiyan
Dr. Ashley Dyson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geotechnics is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• offshore geotechnics
• offshore renewable energy
• offshore foundation systems
• centrifuge testing
• advanced numerical modelling
• physical modelling