ANALYSIS OF DESIGN METHODOLOGIES OF SUBSEA STRUCTURE FOUNDATIONS
João Paulo Dandoulakis1; Paulo Eduardo Lima de Santa Maria2; Elson Antônio do Nascimento1
1 Universidade Federal Fluminense; 2 SM Engenheiros Consultores Ltda.
doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2017-0078
Resumo
As oil reserves onshore became increasingly scarce, the exploration for oil offshore, in deeper waters, has become increasingly necessary. This search for oil in marine sources has led to a remarkable development of new technologies. Oil, gas, and water separation and production plants that were initially installed aboard floating production units have now become part of underwater production systems. As a result, large subsea structures are being designed and installed on the seabed to house such equipment, which are supported by shallow foundations, mainly in the form of mudmats, to generate sufficient soil-mudmat system carrying capacity. The large surface area of these equipment foundations, however, limit and make expensive their installation. In this context, new types of subsea foundations design methodologies have been increasingly developed. Subsea foundation design requires working with very limited data about a complex environment in which soil characteristics can change significantly over a short distance and with time; therefore, in almost all aspects of projects that involve any geotechnical construction, geotechnical engineers need to use judgment and inference to expand this incomplete information to create a general model of the subsurface conditions at a project. Engineers are responsible for deducing the most appropriate material properties that will be used to in the analysis and design. The importance of the geotechnics in this regard is based on the fact that the design of the majority of subsea equipment must be developed considering its interaction with soil. Simultaneously, the evolution of computers has improved the ability to manipulate huge amounts of data as well as the use of numerical simulations to make predictions in geotechnical engineering for works such as foundations. High-performance workstations and personal computers are becoming more and more viable and powerful tools for helping engineers to check and defend their engineering judgment to reach a workable design.
Palavras-chave: Finite-element modelling ; Shallow foundation ; Offshore engineering; Soil-structure interaction ; Subsea manifold