Life Cycle Monitoring of Offshore Steel Pipe Piles via UWFBG Wireless Sensor Network

Monitoring the stress and deformation state of offshore steel pipe piles is very necessary for complex ocean environments. However, challenges still remain in remotely capturing detailed data on offshore projects. Herein, an ultraweak fiber Bragg gratings- (UWFBGs-) based wireless sensor network was established to obtain the high-precision strain along the piles. The No. 3 offshore wind power safety monitoring project in South Shandong Peninsula, China, used such a fiber-optic monitoring system. From January 1 to June 1, 2022, strain profiles of three offshore steel pipe piles were measured in seconds with a 1 m spatial resolution and a 1 με strain resolution, which clearly show sea level and mud-water interfaces. To assess the pile’s operational condition, the displacement and rotational angle of the mud surface are further calculated. It is discovered that the horizontal deformation at sea has a positive correlation with the wind, waves, and current, meanwhile decreasing with depth. The UWFBG-wireless sensor network can realize dynamic monitoring and early warning, which is promising for the life cycle monitoring of offshore wind turbine steel pipe piles.