BEARING CAPACITY ESTIMATION OF SPUDCAN ON SANDY AND CLAYEY GROUND

Abstract

 In harbours for offshore wind turbines, self-propelled SEP vessels anchor at the quay and land the spudcan at the end of the leg on the seabed, with extremely high loads of 50 to 250 MN. This may cause harmful residual displacement of the quay wall after the landing of the leg, and measures to increase the bearing capacity by replacing the surface ground with crushed stone have been considered. However, the bearing capacity evaluation using the general formula derived from the Terzaghi equation is difficult due to the non-uniformity of the crushed stone-replaced ground. In this study, vertical loading model tests were first implemented in a centrifugal force field on ground containing a crushed stone layer to determine the bearing capacity characteristics. Then, to estimate the bearing capacity obtained from the model tests, an attempt was made to evaluate the bearing capacity using the circular slip analysis. The results showed that the circular slip analysis with the adjusted coefficient improved the accuracy of bearing capacity estimation.