Practicing engineers in the offshore engineering industry will find in this contributed handbook practical information on current oil field production development practices for foundations and subsea flowlines. The technical challenges associated with deepwater developments have led to significant innovations. The contributors are practicing engineers and academics who have been at the forefront of offshore geotechnic development for several decades. Until the 1980s, the most common design concerns for offshore foundation and pipeline engineering were associated with extreme storm loadings, earthquakes, mudflows, fatigue, and installation activities. Engineers today face additional concerns, including: submarine slope failures, thermal buckling of pipelines, catenary riser interaction with the seafloor, vortex induced vibration of flowlines, shallow water flows encountered during drilling operations, and thermal interaction of pipelines with permafrost.
Deepwater Foundations and Pipeline Geomechanics describes
recent advances in geophysical data acquisition and evaluation as they
relate to offshore developments, as well as foundation and pipeline
design considerations. The presentation is focused on deepwater
geotechnics as well as subsea and Arctic pipeline design considerations,
but engineers will find much of it applicable to other situations.
Key Features: --Describes deepwater foundation issues and the corresponding site investigation requirements --Illustrates the use of integrated geophysical studies in field
architecture planning, geohazard investigations, planning geotechnical
investigations and foundation selection --Demonstrates the
application of centrifuge modeling techniques for soil-structure
interaction and introduces the application of risk analysis to
foundation design with example applications --Discusses geomaterial
models and features necessary for their successful application to
various foundation problems and includes illustrative examples for
suction piles, flowline-soil interaction and more --WAV offers
downloadable spreadsheets to calculate soil-pipe interaction responses,
spreadsheets demonstrating reliability calculations, color versions of
geophysical profiles, and example Abaqus analysis input files for
analyzing lateral buckling of subsea flowlines.