CEE Seminar: Offshore Foundation Design for Renewable Energy

Abstract: This presentation will discuss the current state-of-the-art for offshore foundation design specifically focused on renewable energy such as offshore wind turbines and tidal current turbines. Harvesting renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and tidal currents have received great interest from researchers, the energy industry and government agencies around the world. Effective and economical foundations are a critical component for the installation of offshore power generation systems. Traditional oil and gas (O&G) structures are designed to minimize effects of environmental loading; however, both wind and tidal current turbines must be designed to interact with the horizontal loading to generate power. This presentation will address the challenges related to the geotechnical engineering design associated with renewable energy installations offshore.

Bio: Cassandra Rutherford is an assistant professor of geotechnical engineering in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University. She graduated with all her civil engineering degrees from Texas A&M University. Her research interests include offshore geotechnical engineering, offshore geohazards, renewable energy foundations and the response of marine soils to dynamic and static loading. Rutherford worked for TDI-Brooks International, an offshore soil sampling company, for six years and at the University of Illinois as an assistant professor for five years. She is an ASCE Exceed teaching fellow and a member of the Offshore Geotechnics Technical Committee for the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. Rutherford recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her work on “CAREER: Experimental Modeling of Tidal Current Turbine Foundations: An Integrated Research and Education Plan.”