Magnetomechanical response of a steel monopile during impact pile driving

This paper reports on a measurement campaign in which the magnetomechanical response of a steel monopile is recorded during installation with a hydraulic impact hammer. By comparing impact-induced changes in the magnetic stray field of the structure to the measured strain, this effect is analysed for the first time under dynamic loading conditions on such a large scale. It is shown that the measured stray field displays an excellent correspondence with the strain in terms of frequency content and amplitude ratio for hammer blows that induce compressive strain pulses of different magnitude. Using the data, a non-contact method is developed and validated to infer the hammer-induced strains using the dynamic magnetic stray field. The proposed method can be applied during pile installations when the use of conventional strain measurement devices is challenging, e.g. in the offshore environment.