Key information
- Location: University of Southampton
- Dates: March 2025
- Duration: 2-day Masterclass
- Specialist access to the Geotechnical Laboratory and a Geotechnical Centrifuge Facility.
Pricing
- Industry participant rate: £1000 - Course materials and lunch included. Participants are responsible for the cost and organisation of their travel and accommodation.
- Early Career Researchers: Free - In line with EPSRC funding policy, the cost is covered for academic researchers who meet the definition of an Early Career Researcher (Post Doctoral Research Assistants (PDRAs), early career academic staff within the first three years of their academic appointment, or PhD students within 12 months of completion who are exploring a future career in the ORE sector), and are part of our network. There will be no charge for Early Career Researchers to attend a Masterclass, but they will be responsible for covering expenses such as travel and accommodation.
Included in your day
- Unparalleled access to the most up-to-date knowledge in a session created by academics at the forefront of ORE research and teaching
- Access to world-class facilities and hands-on demonstrations
- Electronic access to course material and presentations after the masterclass
- Networking opportunities
- Q&A session with Course Director(s)
- Lunch and refreshments
- Electronic certificate of attendance
About the Masterclass
Over the course of this Masterclass, participants will gain an appreciation of geotechnical engineering applied to offshore renewable energy problems. The course will start with the background to soil mechanics, with a simplified overview of the strength and stiffness of seabed sediments, and how that is captured in mathematical and computational models.
Particular emphasis will be placed on the range of structural and foundation designs for different offshore renewable energy applications, and their relative suitability in different contexts. Participants will benefit from hands-on demonstrations as well as observation of a live scalemodel experiment on a geotechnical centrifuge.
The Masterclass provides practical experience in a Geotechnical Laboratory and a Geotechnical Centrifuge Facility, where failure mechanisms and soil-structure interactions are studied using real soil samples at a small scale. The course will accommodate both geotechnical specialists and attendees with other disciplinary expertise, who wish to develop a working understanding of offshore geotechnical engineering.
Drawing on expertise from 10 UK universities, the Supergen ORE Hub is in a unique position to offer the opportunity to learn directly from the UK's foremost specialists in offshore renewable energy at world-leading facilities. To book your place on this Masterclass we encourage you to register early as places are limited. This Masterclass is scheduled to run a second time in 2027.
| Topics covered |
|---|
| Introduction to geotechnics: basic soil mechanics, strength and stiffness, theoretical and computational methods |
| Offshore site investigation: geological basis, in-situ testing, laboratory testing |
| Offshore foundation design: structural configurations, environmental loading, different foundation concepts, case studies |
| Demonstrations and visits |
|---|
| Centrifuge model testing: theoretical basis, example model experiment |
| Hands on activities | |
|---|---|
| Device | Topics covered |
Basic soil tests | Carry out basic laboratory soil characterisation tests |
Core logging | Explore the geology of core samples taken from an offshore location |
In situ geotechnical testing equipment | Observe penetrometer equipment used for in-situ soil characterisation |
| Marine robotics and seabed mapping | VR demonstration and inspect equipment used to map and characterise the seabed |
