Abstract
Mat foundations are widely used in jack-up offshore platforms to support and transfer loads. Regarding mat foundations working on the seabed, the excess wave-induced pore pressure is critical to seabed stability, which may finally cause structural failure. Therefore, it is important to investigate the distribution of the excess pore pressure in the seabed around the mat foundation. In this study, experiments were performed to study the excess pore pressure distribution around a mat foundation in scale considering the true load state by recording wave profiles and pore pressures inside a sandy seabed. To guarantee the reliability of experiments, a numerical study was conducted and compared with the experimental results. Experimental results indicate that with the existence of the mat foundation, the excess pore pressure is higher at the region, the range of which is the width of the model mat (Wm) before the structure. The maximum pore pressure appears at 0.55 Wm in front of the center of the mat foundation. In addition, the current significantly increases the range of high pore pressure area and the amplitude of the excess pore pressure. As the mat orientation changes, the position of the maximum pore pressure changes from the front to the edge of the mat.
Highlights
Jack-up platforms are widely used in offshore oil exploitation and pile installation because of their relatively less distribution on the seabed and relatively better stability [1,2,3]
Mat foundations, which act as temporary supports to transfer upper loads to the seabed, are commonly used for its commendable terrain adaptability, better consolidation control, and convenient construction [4]
Especially in shallow sea areas, ocean waves are the significant loads acting on structures and seabed, so the wave-induced seabed response cannot be ignored [1]
Summary
Jack-up platforms are widely used in offshore oil exploitation and pile installation because of their relatively less distribution on the seabed and relatively better stability [1,2,3]. Three-dimensional numerical simulations have been performed to study the wave-induced poro-elastic seabed response around a hexagonal gravity-based offshore foundation by an integrated multi-physics model-based framework on OpenFOAM [6]. Zhang et al [2] expanded the integrated model (PORO-WSSI 2D) to investigate the wave-permeable structure-porous seabed interactions and applied it to study the wave-induced pore pressure under various wave, soil, and structure parameters. The experiments were conducted to study the differences of wave surface, velocity field, and pore water pressure between submerged breakwater with non-breaking harmonic waves [15,16]. These two experiments focused on the evolution of monochromatic waves without the observation of the seabed response. Some numerical simulations are carried out to verify the experimental data and complement the spatial distribution of excess pore pressure, since pore pressure can only be measured at finite discontinuities in the test
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