The effect of reinforcing soil inclusion on offshore pipeline ploughs

Abstract

The installation of pipelines on the seabed is a vital part of the oil and gas industry as they allow the safe transfer of oil and gas between oil and gas fields, rigs and countries. It is important to install pipelines as efficiently as possible as it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds per day when installing. It is extremely important to clearly understand the soil on the proposed pipeline route to accurately design the trench being excavated for the use of a pipeline. There are many types of soil which a plough could encounter when being pulled along the seabed. Three of the most common soils encountered by a plough are sand, silt and clay in which numerous research projects have investigated how these effect plough performance. It is common for the plough to encounter some sort of fibrous or reinforced soils on the seabed. Not anticipating the plough encountering fibrous or reinforced soils on the sea bed could prove to be extremely costly as in some cases, numerous multi passes have been needed to achieve the targeted trench depth when a reinforced soil has been encountered. The full effect of fibrous or reinforced soil on an offshore pipeline plough's performance is still unknown. It is important to improve and develop a knowledge and understanding of the effect.This research project has investigated the effect of one type of soil reinforcement on the performance of an offshore pipeline plough. The results found enabled the possibility of incorporating the effect of the reinforced soil into a tow force prediction model widely used in industrial practice.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	English
Supervisor	Michael Brown (Supervisor) & Mark Bransby (Supervisor)