Modelling Seabed Ploughing Using the Material Point Method

TY - JOUR

T1 - Modelling Seabed Ploughing Using the Material Point Method

AU - Cortis, Michael

AU - Coombs, William M.

AU - Augarde, Charles E.

AU - Robinson, Scott

AU - Brown, Michael

AU - Brennan, Andrew

N1 - The work presented in this paper is part of a study of seabed ploughing for offshore energy infrastructure and is funded by Grants EP/M000397/1 and EP/M000362/1 of the UK EPSRC

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Ploughing of the seabed is needed for the installation of cables and pipelines and is an area of construction likely to increase given plans in the UK and elsewhere for offshore marine energy (wind and tidal). Seabed ploughing is an expensive and sometimes risky operation for which there are limited guidelines as to what the tow force and speed is for an expected trenching profile within a specified ground condition. Most ploughing schemes are designed using semi-empirical approaches, with very few computational tools able to take into account the geometric and material nonlinearity inherited by the ploughing problem. In this paper we describe how the Material Point Method (MPM) is being used as a numerical tool to model seabed ploughing with the aim of providing an improved predictive tool for the future, via an EPSRC-funded research project at Durham and Dundee Universities. Various issues are discussed in the paper including the means of modelling moving essential boundaries and the choice of basis functions, and this new method in MPM is demonstrated on a simple ploughing problem.

AB - Ploughing of the seabed is needed for the installation of cables and pipelines and is an area of construction likely to increase given plans in the UK and elsewhere for offshore marine energy (wind and tidal). Seabed ploughing is an expensive and sometimes risky operation for which there are limited guidelines as to what the tow force and speed is for an expected trenching profile within a specified ground condition. Most ploughing schemes are designed using semi-empirical approaches, with very few computational tools able to take into account the geometric and material nonlinearity inherited by the ploughing problem. In this paper we describe how the Material Point Method (MPM) is being used as a numerical tool to model seabed ploughing with the aim of providing an improved predictive tool for the future, via an EPSRC-funded research project at Durham and Dundee Universities. Various issues are discussed in the paper including the means of modelling moving essential boundaries and the choice of basis functions, and this new method in MPM is demonstrated on a simple ploughing problem.

KW - Essential boundary conditions

KW - Material point method

KW - Offshore geotechnics

KW - Ploughing

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85014721896

U2 - 10.1016/j.proeng.2017.01.002

DO - 10.1016/j.proeng.2017.01.002

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85014721896

VL - 175

SP - 1

EP - 7

JO - Procedia Engineering

JF - Procedia Engineering

ER -