Introduction  Bucket foundation is a promising and environmental friendly foundation for offshore wind turbines. Effectively penetrating this foundation to a design depth with satisfied levelness and avoiding the side soil plug heave or the buckling deformation of bucket skirt and compartment plates during the suction installation are chanlleging problems for the development of bucket foundations.

  Method  By summarizing the application of the suction bucket foundation at wind power section in the world, the related mechanisms and methods involved in the two critical issues of penetrating and leveling during the suction construction process were analyzed.

  Result  The results show that the accurate estimation for the penetration resistance, the critical suction and the possible structural deformation in layered soils can effectively facilitate the systematic analysis of the instability mechanism of the bucket foundation, the multi-bucket founfation and the compartment-bucket foundation in terms of the installtion risk reduction.

  Conclusion  The summary analysis of application of suction bucket foundation for offshore wind power can provide some reference for the foundation penetrating and leveling construction scheme for the actual project.