Geology for offshore wind installations in the Utsira Nord wind area
This Master's project was designed for Edgar Smaadal who started the Master's program in Earth sciences, UiB, spring of 2025. The Master's project is given by the research group Quaternary geology & paleo climate.
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Project description
Offshore wind is set to become a major growth industry in Norway. As the world economy is decarbonizing, the demand for renewable green energy is very high and the NW European coast has excellent wind resources. Major parts of the NW European coast was recently glaciated, and glacial erosion and deposition has resulted in highly heterogeneous seabed soil conditions here. The NW European seas are therefore very challenging places to place anchors and foundations for offshore wind turbines. Improved geological understanding of these soil conditions can help bring costs down for future offshore wind.
This MSc project will utilize data from in situ cone penetration tests (CPTu), sedimentological, chronological, and geotechnical analyses on sediment cores as well as seismic data from high resolution 2D sub-bottom profiles collected from the Utsira Nord offshore wind farm area. The objective for this project is to elucidate the geological processes that have shaped the sea-bed sediments in the Norwegian Channel and describe their geotechnical properties and potential impact on offshore wind installations.
It will be possible to participate on marine geological cruises in 2025. This master project is part of the 4SWIND project funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), Equinor and Geoprovider, and the InFluSE project funded by RCN, Equinor and Aker BP.
The MSc will work in these projects and be exposed to industry sponsors and stakeholders through various projectmeetings and conferences.
Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS)
1.semester: GEOV364/5; GEOV300/5;
2.semester: BYGG115/10 (HVL); GEOV302/10; GEOV231/10; GEOV329/10; AG-342/10 (UNIS)
Note that there are more study credits than necessary, these are alternatives in case of collisions.
Field-, lab- and analysis work
TOPAS subbottom profiles, inetrpretation in Petrel and correlation with sediment core data
Sediment core anslysis:
Geotechnical testing,
Grain size analysis,,
XRF-core scanning,
Visual description of cores
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