Spudcan-Pile Interaction
Jack-up rigs are commonly employed to perform offshore oil and gas drilling. A jack-up rig is founded on spudcans and cantilevered over an adjacent jacket platform to drill new wells or workover existing wells. During spudcan installation, large volume of soil is displaced and consequently severe stresses may be induced on piles supporting the jacket platform. The increasing numbers of jack-up rigs being deployed at close proximity to piled platforms accentuates the need for research into quantifying the effect of spudcan penetration on adjacent piles. With the aim of improving the understanding of spudcan-pile interaction at a more fundamental level, five companies have funded the Spudcan-Pile Interaction Joint Industry Project. Extensive experimental and numerical studies were performed at the National University of Singapore to investigate the interaction between a spudcan foundation and the adjacent piled foundation supporting the permanent jacket platform in soft clay during the installation and extraction processes.
This seminar will focus on the numerical simulations of spudcan-pile interaction. Accurate assessment of lateral pile responses necessitate the simulation of continuous spudcan penetration which is beyond the capability of conventional Lagrangian based finite element approach. A novel Eulerian finite element technique was successfully adopted for this purpose. The numerical model was first validated against the centrifuge experimental results under different geometricconfigurations and soil profiles. Extensive parametric studies were then conducted to supplement the experimental data. This numerical approach can be readily applied to perform site-specific assessment to mitigate the risks associated with spudcan-pile interaction.
For online registration, click HERE.
Additional Details
Contact Person - Ms Norela Buang
Contact Number - 6516 4314
Organizer - Center for Offshore Research and Engineering, CORE and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, NUS