Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
National University of Singapore
Offshore Pile Foundations
Introduction
Y K Chow
(email: chowyk@nus.edu.sg)
Typical piled jacket platform (after Le Tirant, 1979)
Field Development Options for Oil & Gas
Production – Fixed Platform, Compliant Tower, TLP,
Semi-FPS, Spar, FPSO
Offshore Pile Foundations
Design shear strength profile and scour potential
Pile types
Temporary support of unpiled platform
Pile driving analysis
Axial capacity and axial response
Lateral capacity and lateral response
Pile group response
Pile Types
Pile Types
•Driven steel piles
Note: Driven piles have been found to give very low shaft friction in
calcareous sands (e.g. North Rankin A platform on the North‐West
Shelf of Australia where some piles penetrated over 100 m penetration
in just a few blows.). Remedy – drilled and grouted pile.
Drilled and Grouted Piles
• Oversize hole is drilled to the required penetration, an insert pile (usually a
pipe) is lowered into the hole and the space between the pile and the soil
(including inside the pipe) is grouted (there are variation of this onshore in
Hong Kong for example where the insert is a steel H‐pile section)
• Open hole may need to be stabilized with drilling mud (like the use of
bentonite for bored pile construction onshore). Alternatively, a casing may
need to be used in the upper soft soil section
• Potential problems – stability of open hole; accumulation of debris at the
pile toe which leads to “soft” toe and hence toe bearing capacity may be
ignored in design (similar problems like those for bored piles onshore);
grouting operation (similar to base grouted bored pile)
OT5206 Offshore Foundations
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
National University of Singapore
Temporary Support of Unpiled Platform
Introduction
The up‐ended unpiled steel platform requires to be temporarily supported
prior to the installation of the foundation piles. This support comes from:
• soil resistance acting on jacket leg extension (single piles) or pile sleeve
projections (pile groups)
• bearing capacity of unpiled mud mats
• bearing capacity of horizontal bracings
Jacket Leg Extension or Pile Sleeve Projections
• Vertical resistance: skin friction and end‐bearing resistance acting on
jacket legs extension or pile sleeve projections (see later notes on axial
capacity of piles). Strictly it should be the vertical component of the axial
capacity but in view of the small batter, the small difference may be
neglected.
• Horizontal resistance: passive resistance developed against jacket legs
extension or pile sleeve projections (see later notes on lateral resistance of
piles)
Unpiled Mud Mats and Horizontal bracings
The vertical bearing capacity of these elements are calculated using bearing
capacity theories for shallow foundations (see Prof Leung’s notes).
Mud mat: Generally triangular or rectangular in shape – may be
approximated as equivalent circular footing or rectangular foundation
Horizontal bracing: Treated as equivalent rectangular foundation – tubular
shape ignored in calculation