• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.110-121
• /
• 2001

The interest in suction piles by the oil industry was risen in the middle of 1980's. Recently, suction piles have been applied increasingly in offshore engineering due to its low cost, simplicity, efficiency, and reliability. Suction piles have normally been used as anchors of floating structures and foundations of marine structures in deep-water locations. Suction piles have several technical advantages over conventional piles and anchors; fast and easy installation at any depth of water, extremely large resistance due to its huge size, and easy retrieval by applying a positive suction pressure inside the pile, etc. Daewoo E&C Co., Ltd. has conducted a series of field suction pile installation and loading tests inside the Okpo harbor located in Geojedo and the Onsan harbor in Ulsan, Korea, during the summer of 2001, which may provide additional validation of the analytical solutions previously developed by the US Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center. This is a brief description of the general mechanisms of suction pile installation and loading capacity based on the study conducted by the US Navy and Daewoo E&C Co., Ltd.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2005.10a
• /
• pp.517-520
• /
• 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 Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.27 no.11
• /
• pp.27-37
• /
• 2011

A series of centrifuge model tests to investigate the suction pile pullout loading capacity in sand have been performed. The main parameters that affect the pullout loading capacity of a suction pile include the mooring line inclination angle and the padeye position of the suction pile. With respect to the padeye position, the maximum pullout loading capacity is obtained when the padeye position is near 75% of the pile length from the top. The direction of the pile rotation changes when the padeye position reaches somewhere near 50~75% for all mooring line inclination angles. The translation displacement of suction pile to develop the time of maximum pullout loading capacity decreased as the mooring line inclination angle increased. In addition, the vertical displacements of the center of a suction piles for all cases appeared to develop toward the ground surface.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.103-116
• /
• 2014

This paper presents the results of a numerical investigation on the load carrying capacity and consolidation behavior of suction piles. Three dimensional numerical models which reflect realistic ground conditions and installation procedures including the ground-suction pile interface were adopted to conduct a parametric study on variables such as the length-diameter ratio and the loading configurations, i.e, vertical, horizontal, and combined loads. The results indicated that the load carrying capacity of a suction pile can only be realistically obtained when the interface behavior between the suction pile and the ground is correctly modeled. Also carried out was the stress-pore pressure coupled analysis to investigate the consolidation behavior of the suction pile after the application of a vertical loading. Based on the results, failure envelops and associated equations were developed, which can be used to estimate load carrying capacity of suction piles installed in similar conditions considered in this study. The results of consolidation analysis based on the stress-pore pressure coupled analysis indicate that no significant excess pore pressure and associated consolidation settlement occur for the loading configuration considered in part due to the load transfer mechanism of the suction pile.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.59-66
• /
• 2014

This paper presents the pullout behavior of suction pile using finite difference method; and the commercial software, FLAC3D, was employed for the numerical analyses. The ultimate pullout capacity of suction pile was predicted using conventional equations, and the results were compared with the results from numerical analyses with varying pile diameter, pile length, and the undrained shear strength of clays. Based on the results from 24 analyses, it was found that the failure pattern depends not only on the drainage condition of suction pile, but also on the pile dimensions and the material properties of surrounding soils. The developed side shear (DSS) along the internal surface of the suction pile was collected from numerical analyses, which was used to classify the failure type between sliding failure and tensile failure. Regardless of the external DSS, the high internal DSS tends to result in sliding failure in the numerical analyses, which conforms well to the estimation from conventional equations.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.67-76
• /
• 2011

Numerical analyses were performed to analyze the behavior of a suction pile under lateral loads with different soil layer conditions (uniform clay layer, uniform sand layer, and multi layers consisting of clay and sand layers) and different loading locations (top, middle, and bottom of the suction pile). The results of the analyses revealed that, regardless of the soil layer conditions, the lateral resistances at the loading location of the middle of the suction pile were the maximum. For the given loading locations, the lateral resistances of the suction pile for the uniform sand layer were relatively higher than those for the multi layer. By analyzing translations and rotations of the suction pile, it was identified that the amount of translation was highly dependent on both the soil layer condition and the lateral loading location while the rotated angle varied significantly with the lateral loading location, but not much with soil layer condition.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.205-215
• /
• 2012

Recently, interest of offshore structure construction in South Korea is growing as the land space becomes limited for further development and the renewable energy grows to be more attractive for the replacement of the fossil energy. In order for the optimal construction of optimum offshore floating structures, development of safe and economical offshore foundation technologies is a priority. In this study, the large-deformation behavior of a suction pile, which markets are rapidly growing nowadays, is analyzed for three different loading locations (top, middle, and bottom of the suction pile) with three different displacement inclinations (displacement controlled with displacement inclinations of 0, 10, and 20 degrees from the horizontal). The behavior analysis includes quantifications of maximum resistances, translations, and rotation angles of the suction pile. The suction pile with its diameter of 10 m and height of 25 m is assumed to be embedded in clay, sand, and multi layers of subsea foundation. The soil properties of the clay, sand, and multi layers were determined based on the results of the site investigations performed in the West sea of South Korea. As analyses results, the maximum resistance was observed at the middle of the suction pile with the displacement inclination of 20 degrees, while the translations and rotations resulting from the horizontal and inclined pullouts were not significant until the horizontal components of movements at the loading points reach 1.0 m.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2010.03a
• /
• pp.1120-1131
• /
• 2010

In this thesis the model tests were performed to the horizontal pull-out characteristics of a suction pile subjected to a pull in sands. For this model tests, soil conditions ($D_r$=65), three pile diameters (D=100, 150, 200mm) and five loading points (h/L=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1) were changed. And the experimental results were also compared with those by the theoretical methods. The results by the experimental and theoretical analysis are as follows. The ultimate horizontal pull-out resistance by the model test increased as the loading point (h/L) moved downwards from the pile top, and the maximum value reached at the h/L=0.75. The theoretical ultimate horizontal pull-out resistance by Broms(1964) and Hong(1984) agreed well with that by the model test at h/L=0 and 0.25, but their results overestimated the experimental result at lower part of pile and the differences between the theoretical and experimental results were of great. While the horizontal loading applied at the upper part of pile, the pile moved to the horizontal direction with rotating clockwise. As the loading point moved downwards from the pile top, the rotating angle of pile was smaller.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2009.09a
• /
• pp.944-955
• /
• 2009

In this thesis the model tests were performed to the pull-out characteristics of a suction pile subjected to a pull-out in sands. For this model tests, three different soil conditions ($D_r$=45, 65, 82%), three pile diameters (D=100, 150, 200mm) and three pile lengths (L=100, 150, 200mm), were changed. And the experimental results were also compared with those by the theoretical methods. The results by the experimental and theoretical analysis are as follows. The ultimate pull-out resistances increased as the relative density of sands, pile diameter, length and the ratio of pile length to diameter increased. The ultimate pull-out resistance by Meyerhof method(1973) overestimated that by the model test, but the results using the soil-pile friction angle suggested by Aas(1966) in the Meyerhof(1973) method were in good agreement with the experimental results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
• /
• 2014.10a
• /
• pp.495-496
• /
• 2014

The suction method is the substructure installation using the water pressure difference generated by discharging water inside the pile by the pumping operation, after the intrusion by the self-weights of a large hollow steel pipe or a concrete structure. It is known as the low-noise and low-vibration method against the general pile driven method and eco-friendly, also. Most current design and safety assessment of the support structure and considering only the static load, however, the importance of dynamic behavior becomes magnified as the size of wind power generator increases. This study measures the natural frequency of the suction pile prototype about the penetration depth as a part of basic research and analyzed the interaction between the soil and the structure.