What is adaptation? What does it mean to adapt? To adapt according to Oxford languages is to “become adjusted to new conditions”. Meaning that, as time goes on, the world tends to change, the world needs to keep up with the change, and to do that new ways of overcoming waves of change are necessary. Technology needs to experience adaptation and people need to make it so. Throughout recent years, sustainable energy has been an ongoing concept, new ways of producing energy that doesn’t burn natural resources at a rate higher than those resources can be restored has been an increasingly more and more studied subject. Engineers haven’t stopped wanting to find and create more and more routes of sustainable energy. A popular route that is common to see are wind farms. Traveling through rural areas it is common to see massive structures that spin like a pinwheel at the top that harness the wind's kinetic energy to rotate the blades, and by rotating those, the energy created becomes power for a generator to then make electricity. Though they are stepping into sustainability, they take up living, farming, and commercial space for an ever-growing population. This is where its time to adapt, and now projects are being taken to the ocean, and this is where issues arise. Offshore engineering is relatively new, and is increasingly getting better by the day, but there are issues and solutions to those issues. These problems come in various types of ways and will be discussed in both their problems and how those can be overcome. First is geotechnical, which involves how the earth's geotechnical systems, like seismic activity, can create issues on these wind farms. Second is environmental, this focuses on how these offshore systems affect the environment and public backlash that came with it. Third is project management, this focuses on the management and business side of these projects. Solutions to all these issues will also be discussed, each category there has been processes that have been researched that mitigate many of the problems that arise.
Methodology
The research found in this study has been put together to give an explanation on the problems that arise during offshore engineering. All the research gathered for this study came from the Florida State University Library Database online. To find articles on the topic, key words and phrases such as, “Offshore engineering”, “Offshore wind farms”, “Geotechnical issues of offshore engineering”, “Environmental issues of offshore engineering”, “Project management of offshore structures”, “Offshore structures” were used. Using key words and phrases and the use of the filter option provided by the FSU database the articles found consist of journaling in newspapers and scholarly peer-reviewed articles. The filter Florida State University’s online database lets the user focus on only finding peer-reviewed sources, as well as other things such as filtering subject, source type, and much more. The articles compiled show issues and solutions of many aspects of offshore engineering.
Results
Issues when constructing and engineering out in the ocean, come up quite often. The first type of many of these issues are geotechnical. Geotechnics, according to Oxford Languages, is a branch of study about modifying soil and rocks within the civil engineering field. Modifying soil under water is hard and can lead to one of the main issues of engineering out in the ocean, which is called liquefaction. Liquefaction is when “the strength and stiffness of marine soft clay will decrease” (Huang and Han 2020) and the soil will become so weak that it won’t be able to hold a structure that has its foundation embedded within it. According to Yu Huang, liquefaction may occur under seismic activity, powerful waves, storms, and sea ices. Huang and Han’s article also provides incidents that occurred under liquefaction, for example, “…in 2010, huge waves caused liquefaction of the seabed soil in some areas of the Yellow River Delta in China, and an offshoreplatform capsized, causing two deaths and economic losses of 5.92 million”. (Huang and Han 2020). To prevent these things from happening there are two ways. Floating systems that are anchored, or grounded systems. What type of system that is used is typically dependent on depth of the water they are being place in. As shown by Bhattacharya S, Biswal S, Aleem M, Amani S, Prabhakaran A, Prakhya G, Lombardi D, Mistry HK, buried systems distribute the forces placed on them by being a placed on a platform that has a bit of tilt to it so that it can be flexible with the current, so that the windmill won’t break, and floating systems are held in place by cables that are hooked to the ground beneath them. The forces of seismic activity and currents get absorbed through the cables. According to Bhattacharya S, Biswal S, Aleem M, Amani S, Prabhakaran A, Prakhya G, Lombardi D, Mistry HK, the cables on the floating system are typically spread out a lot so there is less of a chance that cable will make the windmill tip if one of the cable’s anchors ends up in a fault. Next another issue that may arise is environmental, and how offshore engineering affects ecosystems and disrupts productive habitats. One news article by the Rhode Island Current exemplifies one of the opinions of the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine about engineering in the Gulf of Maine that could potentially destroy one of, according to a policy director by the name of Patrice McCarron “one of the most productive ecosystems in the world” (Robert Zullo 2024). Offshore engineering can disrupt habitats, and a firm or government may get a lot of public denouncements for putting wind farms in very highly sought after spots. There is a solution to this issue through a multi-criteria decision-making approach. It weighs the factors in accordance with what are the more pressing issues they are facing with developing a site for renewable energy in the water. According to the manual “Determine the relative importance of each criterion with respect to each other. After determining the weights of the main criteria, determinethe priority for all sub-criteria” (Abdel-Basset, M., Gamal, A., Chakrabortty, R. K., & Ryan, M. 2021). One of these key criteria being the environment in which they are building at. Marine protected areas are a big stressor when putting in these facilities and must be accounted for, shown in the quote “significance in marine protected areas (MPAs) and recognized that several types and habitats in MPAs are exposed to several stressors” (Abdel-Basset, M., Gamal, A., Chakrabortty, R. K., & Ryan, M. 2021). Marine protected areas are habitats that would be affected by these facilities, and it could really hurt the environment if the habitats were disrupted. Lastly, the issue of project management. Good management is crucial to offshore engineering due to how much of a task it is. There is a lot of processes with a lot of costs attached to them. According to the article “Review on fixed and floating offshore structures. part II: Sustainable design approaches and project management”, things such as equipment selection that best suits the project, manufacturing this equipment, drilling processes, and much more are important to account for and manage. Also, things like the software used are also important to account for as they all are part of a bigger cost of production. The article states, “However, there are various stages of offshore construction which are necessary for the sustainable delivery of an offshore platform” (Amaechi, C. V., Reda, A., Butler, H. O., Ja’e, I. A., & An, C. 2022). This means there are a lot of factors to be aware of and according to the article these “stages” include things like transportation, investment feasibility, surveys, tests, commissioning and much more. To keep the heavy load of project management under control there is an article that describes strategies to employ to control the management and cost of the project preparation. According to “Cost Control of Offshore Engineering Project: An Analysis from Supply Chain Management”, by implementing project management by integrating it with supply chain management, it can bring a project to a higher quality product with reduced cost (Liu, L., Wen, X., Ba, J., & Wu, S.2020). According to the article, “there is a lack of effective control over project cost management in the design stage of offshore engineering” (Liu, L., Wen, X., Ba, J., & Wu, S. 2020). This shows the issue of managing offshore engineering because as mentioned in the article “Review on fixed…project management”, there are a lot of steps and stages to account for. In order to fight these issues, standardized management that is present during supply chain management will greatly increase quality.
Discussion
The results make evident that the liquefaction and seismic activity within the ocean pose a serious problem such as the incident in China that was highlighted by Huang and Yu in their studies. What is also made evident is that there are ways to combat this issue, which can be crucial because losing millions of dollars for companies and firms isn’t optimal for good business practice. What is also made clear from the sources is that it also depends on how far the windmill is from the shore, because there are different ways of building structures depending on how deep the waters are, as presented by Bhattacharya S, Biswal S, Aleem M, Amani S, Prabhakaran A, Prakhya G, Lombardi D, Mistry HK. This could be because the soil is different depending on how deep the water is due to many factors such as pressure, temperature, and what could be holding it in place like plants. However, there are limitations to these structures, and they have the possibility of becoming an eye sore. Obviously, a company can’t run electricity from the middle of the ocean so, the wind farms would have to be relatively close to shore and could ruin beaches and environments. Practical implications would be to put these offshore farms in relatively low populated areas, and make sure successful ecosystems don’t reside there.
It is no question that preserving nature benefits the world that humans live in. As noted by the news source by Robert Zullo in the Rhode Island Current, it would be detrimental to the Gulf of Maine if there was a renewable energy farm placed there. This is important because it reveals another issue that may arise when doing offshore engineering, and that is where you do it at. It is crucial to respect the environment even when trying to come up with solutions that may help a lot of the world because by destroying an environment, it may be possible to ruin a big part of the economy, which in Maine is the Gulf of Maine. As stated by Robert Zullo “one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. It supports one of the most valuable fisheries, if not the most valuable fishery in the nation, which is lobster.” (Zullo 2024). Essentially, saying the environment is not only a productive ecosystem for being a habitat, but is also a part of the economy. So, to help with issues such as this a system was put on paper to avoid destroying the environment and installing these renewable energy farms in other places that wouldn’t be an issue when installing. This is important because as offshore engineering expands it needs to have a plan to be able expand while being sustainable. Lastly, are the issues of project management of offshore engineering. As mentioned, there are a lot of stages of offshore engineering and a lot of things to account for, so it is important that businesses and engineers can account for all the stages and costs of production offshore. Equipment selection, site selection, software, investment, surveys, tests, and much more need to have steady management running the show to have good quality and good cost productions. It's important because yes, it is possible to make renewable energy and it totally should be done, but companies can go under the water if project costs get too out of hand, and the product could be bad quality due to bad management. So it’s important that all management stages are properly managed and made present.
Conclusion
This research was compiled to identify and give solutions to issues that arise when offshore engineering. Due to many field studies, incidents, and public opinion, it is important to account for all factors of offshore engineering and to account for all the issues that may arise. Project management, environment selection, and geotechnical issues are all important to account for as they affect the project in different ways and could all be detrimental to a business or firm to leave one issue unaccounted for.
References
Bhattacharya, S., Biswal, S., Aleem, M., Amani, S., Prabhakaran, A., Prakhya, G., Lombardi, D., & Mistry, H. K. (2021). Seismic design of offshore wind turbines: Good, bad and unknowns. Energies, 14(12), 3496. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14123496
Huang, Y., & Han, X. (2020). Features of earthquake-induced seabed liquefaction and mitigation strategies of novel Marine Structures. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 8(5), 310. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8050310
Amaechi, C. V., Reda, A., Butler, H. O., Ja’e, I. A., & An, C. (2022). Review on fixed and floating offshore structures. part II: Sustainable design approaches and project management. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 10(7), 973. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10070973
Zullo, R. (2024, July 24). To decarbonize, New England is betting big on offshore wind. can it deliver? • maine morning star. Maine Morning Star. https://mainemorningstar.com/2024/07/24/to-decarbonize-new-england-is-betting-big-on offshore-wind-can-it-deliver/
Liu, L., Wen, X., Ba, J., & Wu, S. (2020). Cost Control of Offshore Engineering Project: An Analysis from Supply Chain Management. Journal of Coastal Research, 107(sp1), 129. https://doi.org/10.2112/jcr-si107-033.1
Abdel-Basset, M., Gamal, A., Chakrabortty, R. K., & Ryan, M. (2021). A new hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approach for location selection of sustainable offshore wind energy stations: A case study. Journal of Cleaner
Author: Brandon Smith
(Affiliation with Florida State University Engineering)