The Effects of Backfill Soil Properties on Wave-induced Pore Pressures around a Trenched Pipeline

Offshore pipelines are always trenched into seabed to reduce wave-induced forces and thereby to enhance their stability. The trenches are generally backfilled either by in-site sediments or by depositing selected backfill materials over the pipeline from bottom-dump barge. The actual waves in shallow water zone are always characterized as nonlinear. The proper evaluation of the wave-induced pressures upon pipeline is important for coastal geotechnical engineers. However, most previous investigations of the wave–seabed–pipe interaction problem have been concerned only with a single sediment layer and linear wave loading. In this paper, based on Biot’s consolidation theory, a two-dimensional finite element model is developed to investigate non-linear wave induced pore pressures around trenched pipeline. The influences of the permeability of backfill soil and the geometry profiles of trenches upon soil responses around pipeline are studied respectively.

Estimation of Correlation Distance of Soil Properties by Geostatistics

Random field theory has been used to model the spatial average soil properties, whereas the most widely used, geostatistics, on which also based a common basis (covariance function) has been successfully used to model and estimate natural resource since 1960s. Therefore, geostistics should in principle be an efficient way to model soil spatial variability Based on this, the paper presents an alternative approach to estimate the scale of fluctuation or correlation distance of a soil stratum by geostatistics. The procedure includes four steps calculating experimental variogram from measured data, selecting a suited theoretical variogram model, fitting the theoretical one to the experimental variogram, taking the parameters within the theoretical model obtained from optimization into a simple and finite correlation distance 6 relationship to the range a. The paper also gives eight typical expressions between a and b. Finally, a practical example was presented for showing the methodology.