Abstract
On soft seabed soils, subsea equipment installations are often supported by mudmat foundation systems that can be idealised as parallel strip footings, grillages, or annular (ring-shaped) footings. This paper presents some theoretical results for the bearing capacity of (a) two parallel strip footings, otherwise isolated; (b) a long series of parallel strip footings at equal spacings. The soil is idealised as an isotropic Tresca material possessing a linear increase of undrained strength with depth. The bearing capacity analyses are performed using the method of characteristics, and the trends of these (possibly exact) results are verified by a companion series of upper bound calculations based on simple mechanisms. Parameters of interest are the footing spacing, the relative rate of increase of strength with depth, and the footing roughness. An application of the results to the design of perforated mudmats is discussed. © 2005 Taylor and Francis Group.
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