Abstract
Open ended tubular steel piles are used as a state of the art technique for the foundations of offshore wind turbines (OWT). The commonly used means of installation, impact driving, results in massive sound emissions into the seawater and the subsoil which are harmful for marine life. Current research carried out at the Institute for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering of the Technische Universität Braunschweig covers wave propagation in and between driven piles, subsoil and water. This paper focuses on the properties and the propagation of the elastic waves through an impact driven monopile during its installation and the mechanisms of noise induction into water and subsoil. Within the scope of a research project funded by the German federal government measurements have been carried out during the erection of large diameter monopiles for an offshore wind farm (OWF) in the German North Sea. Axial and tangential strains as well as axial and radial accelerations along the length of the piles will be evaluated concerning the noise generating interactions between pile and water and pile and soil respectively.