Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics III – Meyer (Ed.

)
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN: 978-1-138-02848-7

Lessons learned from pile driving and monitoring in gravels

on the Northstar Artificial Island

P. Jeanjean
BP America Inc., Houston, TX, USA

D. Miller
Golder Associates Inc., Formerly Duane Miller Associates, Anchorage, AK, USA

H. Brooks
Université Laval, Québec City, QC, Canada, Formerly Golder Associates, Anchorage, AK, USA

M. Yogendrakumar
Golder Associates Ltd, Burnaby, BC, Canada

ABSTRACT: The paper presents the experience gained from the installation and monitoring of driven piles
in sands and gravels on the Northstar artificial island in the US Beaufort Sea. The pile design method included
a modification of API main text method for piles in cohesionless material and most of the pile capacity was
anticipated to be coming from the thick gravel layers. However, the results of PDA instrumentation and CAPWAP
analyses showed measured shaft friction and unit end bearing resistance much lower than anticipated. The gravel
layer was characterized as dense to very dense based on the initial site investigation results but the pile driving
experience suggests that the gravel behaved as a loose material. The paper re-emphasizes the difficulty in
characterizing the in-situ relative density of gravel materials and highlights the importance of pile monitoring
in these materials for which the industry experience is limited.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Northstar Island

The Northstar production island is located in the US
Beaufort Sea, 9.5 km (6 miles) offshore from the
mouth of the Kuparuk River in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
(Fig. 1).
The site is on the continental shelf in a water depth of
12m (39ft) and was previously the location of the Seal
Exploration Island constructed by Shell Oil Company
and its partners in 1982. BP purchased the Northstar
field in 1995.
During the winter of 2000, construction of the
Northstar Island began with gravel excavation and
transport to the island from the gravel source near the
mouth of the Kuparuk River over the floating ice sheet.
Following ice removal, the gravel was placed on the
seabed to bring the island to the design grade. The
island is shown on Figure 2 after construction. Figure 1. Location of the Northstar island.
Oil production started in 2001 via a 10-inch pipeline
and this was the first offshore production from a stand-
alone structure in the Arctic.

1.2 The island new operating center The building is supported by driven open-ended
steel tubular piles and this paper discusses the expe-
A brownfield project began in 2007 and included
rienced gained during the geotechnical site investi-
the design and installation of a new operating center
gation, design, installation, and monitoring of these
building, which became operational in 2011.
piles.
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Figure 2. The Northstar artificial gravel island (dimensions,
not including bench: 128 m × 142 m).

2 GEOLOGICAL SETTING

The near surface stratigraphy in the Northstar develop-

ment area reflects the geologic events of the late Pleis-
tocene, during which the rivers of Northern Alaska,
including the Kuparuk River upstream of the island
location, reworked glacial moraines and transported
large amounts of fluvial and glacio-fluvial material to
the arctic coastal plain and onto the exposed coastal
shelf. These sediments typically include mixtures of
gravel, sand, and silts.
Holocene sediments overlying the Pleistocene grav-
els have been deposited mainly in shoal and nearshore
marine deltaic and lagoonal environments. Deltaic
deposits generally consist of organic rich silt and
sands.

3 GEOTECHNICAL SITE INVESTIGATIONS

Figure 3. Locations of boreholes and CPT soundings for
3.1 Historical surveys the 2007 and 2008 ground investigations.
The general vicinity of the project has been under
investigation since the early 1970’s. Geotechnical site
investigations were performed by the USGS, CRREL,
Harding Lawson and Associates, Woodward-Clyde,
and McClelland-EBA. They included borings drilled
with rotary wash techniques and a few CPT soundings.

3.2 Site-specific surveys

Site-specific investigations were performed in 1981
for the design of the original Seal Island and in 1997
for the design of the Northstar Island. Both programs
were limited to boreholes and sampling with rotary
wash techniques with casing. Figure 4. Rolligon and TED ready to drill on floating ice.
Two additional investigations were performed in Northstar Island can be seen in the background.
in the winter of 2007 and 2008. The scope included
boreholes and CPT soundings, as summarized on
Figure 3. mounted on a tracked carrier fitted with a weatherport-
type enclosure to protect the drill and work area from
the weather. Collectively the unit is referred to as a
3.3 Drilling techniques
“tracked, enclosed drill rig or TED and was pulled
Drilling was performed using a CME-75 drill rig con- to each drilling location by a roller-driven rolligon
figured for soil investigations. The drill module was (Fig. 4).

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 Boreholes N08-01 and N08-02 were drilled from
the southern corner of the island using rotary-wash
techniques with casing. After the casing was driven to
the desired sampling depth, material was washed out
of the casing using a tri-cone rock bit attached to the
drilling rod and a high-volume water pump. Samples
were collected after the boring was cleaned out to the
desired sampling depth.
Borehole N08-03 was drilled offshore from the
floating ice using 1.5 m (5 ft) sections of 203 mm
(8 in) O.D. 82 mm (3.25 in) I.D. hollow stem contin-
uous flight auger. An auger-wash technique was used
and pumped water directly down the augers through a
rotary bellcap attached to a high volume water pump
hose with the inner drill rods removed during drilling.
3.4 Sampling techniques
Soil sampling in the three above borings was accom-
plished by driving a heavy-walled 64 mm (2.5 in) O.D.
split barrel samplers with a 1.5 kN (340 lbs) automatic
hammer free-falling 760 mm (30 in) and by pushing
thin-walled Shelby tube samplers. The samples were
collected at 1.5 m (5ft) intervals.
uniform and consists of the expected sequences of silts,
sands, and gravels.
Exceptions include a 1 m thick layer of massive ice
which was found in boring BH N08-02 and is believed
to result from the original island construction.
The CPTs performed offshore from the floating ice
could only penetrate the sands and gravel up to a depth
of 7 m below seafloor before reaching refusal.
The site lithology is summarized on Figures 5–6.
4 SOIL DESIGN PARAMETERS
4.1 Relative density of sands from CPT
The relative density of the sand layers penetrated by the
CPT records of Figure 7 was assessed using the frame-
work proposed by Jamiolkowski (2001), in which the
relative density is estimated as follows:

3.5 Site stratigraphy

The site stratigraphy was assessed from the 2008 bore-
holes and the 2007 CPT soundings. It is relatively where Dr = relative density; qt = corrected CPT tip
resistance; Pa = atmospheric pressure; σ
v = effective
overburden stress; C0 = 23.19; C1 = 0.56; C2 = 2.97.

Figure 5. Site stratigraphy obtained from 2008 boreholes Figure 7. Assessement of sand relative density from CPT
(see Figure 3 for base map). records according to the framework of Jamiolkowsky (2001).

Figure 6. Site stratigraphy and Soil Behavior Type (SBT) obtained from 2007 CPT soundings (see Figure 3 for base map).

589
 Table 1. Soil design parameters.

Figure 8. Assessement of sand and gravel relative density

from SPT records according to the framework of Meyherhof
(1957).

The results are shown on Figure 7 and indicate that

the sands can be classified as extremely dense down
to 3 m with relative densities above 100% and medium
dense to dense between 3 m and 6 m, with relative
densities between 70% and 90%.

4.2 Relative density of gravels from SPT

The relative density of the sandy gravels and gravelly
sands below 6 m was estimated using the blow count
records measured during sampling. The recorded blow
count for the last 305 mm (12 in) of penetration of a
457 mm (18 in) sampler was multiplied by a factor (F)
equal to 2.5 to account for the combined effects of
the non-SPT sampling method including the greater
sample face, the larger hammer energy, and hammer
efficiency.
This corrected blow count was used to estimate
the in-situ relative density by using the relation-
ship proposed by Meyerhof (1957) and Skempton
(1986):
where N = SPT corrected blow count; σ
v = effective
overburden stress in kPa; and Dr = relative density
expressed as a ratio, not a percentage.
The results are shown on Figure 8.
They suggest that the sands and gravels are
extremely dense down to 20 m, very dense between
20 m and 35 m, and dense between 35 m and 47 m.
4.3 Pile design method
The piles were designed according to the API method,
as published in API RP2A 21th Edition (2000) with
the input parameters of Table 1.
The API RP2A recommendations were updated in
2007 and all guidance for gravels was removed because
there were no pile load tests on such materials in
the API database to support the design parameters.
Figure 9. Ratio of Calculated-to-Measured pile compres-
sion capacity, according to the API main text method, as a
function of sand relative density (from Jeanjean et al, 2010).
However, the API methodology remained in use by
the project because, as documented by Jeanjean et al
(2010) and shown on Figure 9, it gives conservative
results for dense to very dense sands and the same
conclusion was thought to be applicable to gravels.
The design resulted in 15 piles, with a 760 mm
(30 in) diameter, a 25.4 mm to 38 mm (1 in to 1.5 in)
wall thickness, and driven open-ended to a target depth
of 32 m (105 ft).
5 PILE INSTALLATION AND MONITORING
5.1 Monitoring instrumentation
Because of the uncertainty in the behavior of the Unit
F sand/gravel mixture, the pile capacity was to be ver-
ified through monitoring of the first two piles to be
installed. A second objective of the monitoring was to
assess the potential pile tip damage during driving.
Dynamic measurements were made with strain
gauges and accelerometers attached to the piles. Sig-
nals were collected and processed using a PAX model
PDA manufactured by Pile Dynamics. This high-strain
dynamic testing was performed in conformance with
ASTM D4945-08.

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Figure 10. Comparison of unit shaft friction from CAPWAP
analyses against API prediction.
Figure 11. Comparison of unit end bearing from CAPWAP
analyses against API prediction.
Following the testing, the data was analyzed using
the CAPWAP program to compute the soil resistance
acting on the piles. CAPWAP analyses are iterative
solutions that match the measured stress-wave.
Piles were typically installed by vibratory driving
with an APE 200 hammer to a depth of about 12 m
(40 ft) below grade. Driving then followed with the
APE D62 or D125-42 open-ended diesel hammers.
Pile Driving Analyzer (PDA) analyses were com-
pleted at the end of initial driving for each pile and
indicated that the piles did not achieve the required
capacity. Two additional 12 m (40 ft) sections of piles
were spliced and PDA/CAPWAP analyses were per-
formed every 12 m (40 ft) to measure the increase in
capacity with depth.
5.2 Measured vs predicted pile capacity
A total of seven CAPWAP analyses were performed at
the end of initial driving on three piles and the results
are shown on Fig. 10–13. One pile test PDA data was
analyzed independently by two different contractors.
Although there were differences in the shaft and end-
bearing component, the total compression capacity
estimations were within 7% of each other.
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Figure 12. Comparison of compression friction capacity
from CAPWAP analyses against API prediction.
Figure 13. Comparison of total compression capacity (fric-
tion + end bearing) from CAPWAP analyses against API
prediction.
The estimated unit friction was only 25% to 50%
of the predicted one and the unit end-bearing was
only about 60% of the predicted one. As a result, the
estimated compression capacity was less than 50% of
the predicted one.
The embedment depths of the piles had to be
increased from 32 m (105 ft) to 70 m (230 ft) to achieve
the required ultimate capacity. Because the soil borings
terminates at a depth of 46 m (150 ft) the sediments
below that depth are unknown but are believed to
consist of the same sequence of sands and gravels
encountered in the borings.
5.3 Pile set-up
A re-strike test was conducted on one pile after approx-
imately 1.5 months after the end of initial driving.
The mobilized compressive resistance increased to
10.5 MN (2365 kips) or an increase of 18%. The capac-
ity increase came predominantly from the bottom
10.5 m (25 ft) of the pile embedment (Fig. 14). This
increase is possibly due to an adfreeze bond formed
from the pile’s embedment in permafrost. Permafrost
was inferred at this depth from the USGS Boring No. 5

Figure 14. Comparison of unit shaft friction at end of initial
driving and at beginning of re-strike after 1.5 month.
two miles away as well as geotechnical experience in
the area.
6 LESSONS LEARNED
6.1 Gravelly sediments in-situ relative density
Although the CPT and SPT records characterized the
gravelly sands and sandy gravels as dense to very
dense, the unit friction estimated from the CAPWAP
analyses is what would be recommended for very loose
sediments (unit friction less than 48 kPa). The hindcast
soil-pile interface friction angle is about 15 degrees.
This case record is similar to the unpublished expe-
rience at the Valdez Marine Terminal in the 1990s
(Musial 2014) and reinforces the difficulty of char-
acterizing in-situ relative densities of gravels and
gravelly materials with CPT and SPT tools.
6.2 Field verification of pile capacity
This case record also highlights the importance of pile
monitoring in gravelly materials for which the industry
experience is limited. No reliable prediction method
exists for pile capacity in such sediments. Robust con-
tingency planning and the mobilization of additional
pile material allowed for driving of the piles to depths
greater than expected.
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6.3 Alternate pile design
Alternate pile designs such as driving the piles closed-
ended or adding fins along the length of the piles can
offer advantages. Closed-ended displacement piles
were recently driven at another artificial island in the
US Beaufort Sea to 15 m (50 ft) below seafloor in a
gravel with similar gradation and SPT behavior as
at Northstar. PDA analyses showed that very large
end-bearing had already developed at that shallow
depth.
The piles at Northstar were not driven closed-ended
because the required uplift capacity would not have
been achieved if the piles had refused prematurely at
a shallow depth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to BP Exploration Alaska for
permission to publish.
REFERENCES
API RP 2A-WSD 2000. Recommended Practice for
Planning, Designing and Constructing Fixed Offshore
Platforms–Working Stresses Design, 21st Edition, Dec.
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Evaluation of relative density and shear strength of sands
from CPT and DMT. Soil Behaviour and soft ground
construction: Proc. of the Symp. October 5–6, 2001, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by the Geo-Institute of
the American Society of Civil engineers.
Jeanjean, P., Watson, P.G., Kolk, H.J. & Lacasse, S. 2010.
RP 2GEO: The new API Recommended Practice for
Geotechnical Engineering, Proc., Offshore Technology
Conference, Houston, TX, Paper 20631.
Meyerhof, G.G. 1957. Discussion on research on determining
the density of sands by penetration testing. Proc. 4th Int.
Conf. on Soil. Mech. And found. Engrg., Vol. 1: 110.
Musial, M. 2014. personal communication.
Skempton, A.W. 1986. Standard penetration test procedures
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