The Tri-Suction Pile Caisson (TSPC) is an noiseless Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) foundation concept, being developed to target large water depths where new foundation designs are needed. In this study, various layouts of loose rock scour protection were studied via physical model tests and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations to investigate correlations between flow amplification and scour protection deformation. The primary flow and flow amplification patterns were studied in detail, after which the results were compared with the scour protection deformation results post-testing. The outcomes show that the flow concentrates predominantly below the integration beam of the TSPC, resulting in flow amplification areas consistent with the deformation patterns observed on the loose rock scour protections. This correlation allows to extrapolate the CFD results for untested configurations, which helps to optimize the scour protection around such complex foundations as the TSPC. Based on these findings, this paper emphasizes the role of CFD calculations in advancing our understanding of scour protection development.

Scour protection, rock protection, suction bucket, offshore wind, scour mitigation