The plant consists of a 120 MW Open Cycle Gas Turbine Power Station using two GE LM6000 Gas Turbines and associated balance of plant. MAD3 Engineering and Italian partner Studio Techne’ coordinated the geotechnical investigation and provided an optimised design for the gas turbines, based on an advanced dynamic analysis which considered the soil-structure interaction.
We provided the coordination of the geotechnical investigation and design optimisation of the turbines foundations and design of foundations for balance of plant.
Challenges that we faced included that the preliminary design of turbines foundation by others significantly exceeded budget and the fast track program required staged delivery. We had inadequate input from the equipment supplier requiring several iterations and inadequate geotechnical input for dynamic analysis which required additional investigation.
We worked closely with NuEnergy to obtain required data to commence design (geotechnical parameters and input from equipment manufacturers) and initial preliminary analysis of the turbines foundations based on optimised dimensions as per previous designs was overcome. Our comprehensive dynamic analysis including soil structure interaction allowed optimising the design.
Concrete volume of optimised foundations for both gas turbines was approximately 300 cubic metres less than the initial design by others.
