Reduced order modeling of non-linear monopile dynamics via an AE-LSTM scheme

Non-linear analysis is of increasing importance in wind energy engineering as a result of their exposure in extreme conditions and the ever-increasing size and slenderness of wind turbines. Whilst modern computing capabilities facilitate execution of complex analyses, certain applications which require multiple or real-time analyses remain a challenge, motivating adoption of accelerated computing schemes, such as reduced order modelling (ROM) methods. Soil structure interaction (SSI) simulations fall in this class of problems, with the non-linear restoring force significantly affecting the dynamic behaviour of the turbine. In this work, we propose a ROM approach to the SSI problem using a recently developed ROM methodology. We exploit a data-driven non-linear ROM methodology coupling an autoencoder with long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks. The ROM is trained to emulate a steel monopile foundation constrained by non-linear soil and subject to forces and moments at the top of the foundation, which represent the equivalent loading of an operating turbine under wind and wave forcing. The ROM well approximates the time domain and frequency domain response of the Full Order Model (FOM) over a range of different wind and wave loading regimes, whilst reducing the computational toll by a factor of 300. We further propose an error metric for capturing isolated failure instances of the ROM.