Offshore wind turbine subjected to supershear earthquake ruptures

Abstract

Supershear earthquakes, analogous to supersonic speeds of sounds, show the presence of a Mach front in the top view. This feature was observed in several past earthquakes, including the 1999 Izmit earthquake, 2001 Kokoxili earthquake, to name a few. The ground motion from supershear ruptures can be destructive to structures due to dominant fault-parallel components. In this study, we demonstrate the effect of supershear ruptures on wind turbines by modelling them in OpenSees. Earthquake ruptures are simulated using SPECFEM3D, another open-source software. By considering arrays at different offsets along strike and away from the strike, the distance effect on serviceability limit states of wind turbines is studied using supershear and subshear earthquakes.