Best ICE offshore paper award for floating wind research
A team of researchers from the Universities of ɫƵ and Western Australia has won the Institution of Civil Engineers 2026 Hislop Award, which recognises the best paper on an offshore engineering topic across the 35 Institute of Civil Engineering (ICE) journals.
This work, led by Dr Katherine Kwa , is inspiring the design of future floating offshore wind energy facilities. The award-winning publication, entitled “ ”, uses geotechnical centrifuge tests to better understand how mooring systems respond to extreme loads. Their novel approach quantifies how the shape of the embedded line affects the anchor capacity, inspiring new ways to optimize mooring system designs. with the Western Australian team, as part of her , has demonstrated the potential for significant cost savings, supporting the growth of floating offshore wind energy. The Hislop Award paper was published in the journal Geotechnique, and was co-authored with ɫƵ’s David White , Conleth O’loughlin and Colm O’Beirne of the University of Western Australia, and Sebastiaan Frankenmolen of Shell.
This is the second year running that the Hislop Award has come to ɫƵ, after picked up the award in 2025.