• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.517-520
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• 2005

The embedded suction anchor(ESA) is and anchor that is driven by a suction pile. The cross-sectional shape of the ESA anchor is circle. Its diameter is the same as that of the suction pile that is used to drive it into the seafloor. For the installation, the anchor is attached to the tip of the suction pile and then driven as a unit with the pile by and applied suction pressure. Once the ESA anchor reaches the desired depth, the pile is retrieved by applying a positive pressure. Finally, only the ESA anchor remains in the soil layer. This paper presents the results of centrifuge model tests to investigate ESA pullout capacity. The main parameters that have effects on the pullout capacity of ESA may include g-level, embedded depth, direction of loading, and loading point. The results of tests show that the pullout loading capacities increase as the loading point shift toward the tip of the anchors for a given loading direction. They also indicate that the loading point associated with the maximum pullout loading capacity is located at approximately 67 percent of the anchor length from the top for the horizontal load.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.7-17
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• 2019

With increasing demand for large offshore infrastructures, suction cofferdams have been large, and the lid stiffener arrangement for a suction cofferdam has become a key element in cofferdam design to constrain the flexural deformation effectively. This study analyzed the changes in the structural behavior of a lid for a suction cofferdam due to lid stiffeners to provide insights into effective stiffener arrangements. By investigating conventional suction anchors, several stiffener patterns of a lid for a polygonal suction cofferdam were determined and analyzed. The structural performance of the stiffened lids was estimated by comparing the stress and deformation, and the reaction distributions on the edge of lid were investigated to analyze the effects of the stiffener arrangement on the lid-wall interface. Finite element analysis showed that radial stiffeners contribute dominantly to decreasing the stress and vertical deflection of the lids, but the stiffeners cause an increase in shear forces between the lid and wall; the forces are concentrated on the lid near the areas reinforced with radial stiffeners, which is negative to lid-wall connection design. On the other hand, inner and outer circumferential stiffeners show little reinforcement effects in themselves, while they can help reduce the stress and deformation when arranged with partial radial stiffeners simultaneously.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.339-344
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• 2015

Suction piles have been widely used as foundations and anchor systems in offshore industry, and recently, it have been tried to be used as foundations for offshore wind turbines. Many researches have shown that stiffness of a foundation could effect dynamic responses of a offshore wind turbine so that appropriate modeling application of wind turbine foundations is recommended. In this paper, we calculate a stiffness matrix of a suction foundation through 3D FEM analysis and compare the results with the ones calculated by conventional formula for estimating stiffness of shallow foundations. And then we carry out integrated load analysis for the evaluation of dynamic responses and natural frequencies of the structure using the calculated stiffness matrix. The results shows that the effect of load in the mudline is not large, but in the case of assuming the foundation as a fixed support, the natural frequency is over-estimated up to 10%. Therefore, considering stiffness of foundations is recommended when you evaluate the natural frequencies of wind turbine structures.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.75-83
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• 2014

Suction bucket foundation is installed with the differential pressure created by pumping water out of bucket. Bucket foundation has usually been utilized in mooring anchor for offshore platform or floating oil and gas production facilities in the open sea. After suction bucket foundation successfully was applied as the foundation for offshore wind turbines in Europe, it recently attracts much attention in Korea, too. To estimate the penetration resistance of the suction bucket foundation is one of the important matters that should be considered during its installation. This study carried out a series of model tests to investigate the penetration resistance of suction bucket foundation. And the mobilized soil strength factor was reviewed through comparing the experimental results by two installation ways (e.g., push-in-load and suction) and the results calculated by the conventional equation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 2016

The sedimentary environment and sediment were surveyed at the West-Northern site of Chagwi-do nearby Jeju Island for the design of the embedded suction anchor system of 10 MW-class floating wave-offshore wind hybrid power generation system. According to the classification scheme of Chough et al.[2002], the echo type of the seismic profiles using the chirp III was classified. As a results, the center and west-northern area of survey site were proved to be type I-3 where subbottom layer with thickness 5~15 m exists under the flat seafloor. On the other hands, the east-southern area were regarded to be type I-1, I-2 and III-1 where seafloor reflection is much stronger than type I-3. Also, the physical tests (unit weight, moisture content, grain size, liquid limit, specific gravity) were performed with samples taken from 8 fixed locations. It is found that the sand (SP), the sand blended with silt (SM) and the mixture of SP-SM are distributed uniformly on the survey area.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.308-314
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the sea floor using a seismic profiler in the northern part of Chagwi-do of Jeju Island in order to select the optimal location for the 60-m-class berth of a sea test bed for wave energy converters and provide basic environmental data for designing a suction anchor. The echo types of the seismic profiles were classified based on the study of Kim et al. (2016a), and the location for installing the suction anchor was selected based on a sediment thickness of more than 10 m. The physical properties of the surface sediments were determined by analyzing the sediment samples obtained from 16 grab sample points. Based on the investigation and analysis, we proposed a survey area in the North-Eastern sea as an optimum location for the 60-m-class berth where the suction anchor could be installed.