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Confronting New Challenges and Sharing Knowledge, 1113 September 2007, London, UK
Abstract
Closely spaced conductor piles are sometimes deviated away from the group to reduce the risk of interaction, using an inclined driving shoe.
The theory developed by Poskitt1 for modelling the deviation of bent conductors or piles during driving
has been extended to conductor piles with an inclined driving shoe. Variables include the axial tip and
side resistance of the pile, the lateral soil resistance, and the length and inclination of the driving shoe.
Parametric results are presented to illustrate the sensitivity of the results to input parameters. A comparison between the theory and the actual deviation of a conductor pile with a driving shoe conrms
the reasonable agreement between theory and practice.
1. Introduction
The conductor pipes of oshore wellhead platforms are often installed closed together. In order to reduce the risk of
interaction, the peripheral conductor piles can be deviated
away from the group. One method that can be used is to
provide an inclined driving shoe, thus creating a tendency
for the pile to deviate in a particular direction. By adjusting
the length and inclination of the driving shoe, the lateral
deviation of a conductor pile can be controlled.
In some cases it is important to know the path of the conductor pile. As deviations may not be small, conventional beamcolumn theory is not applicable and a more general theory
must be used. Poskitt1 has developed a method to compute
the path of a bent pile during driving. From this theory it is
possible to develop a method applicable to conductor piles
with inclined driving shoe. The parameters acting on the deviation of the pile are the axial tip and side resistance of the
pile, the lateral soil resistance, and the length and inclination
of the driving shoe. In order to understand the inuence of
these parameters, a sensitivity analysis was performed. Then,
the developed method was for a real case, where the deviation
was measured, to check the relevance of the model.
(1)
These fundamental relationships lead to the following
equation
2. Poskitt Method
Poskitt has described an incremental method to determine
the path of a non-straight pile during driving. This method
is based on nite dierences and is applied to a pile with
constant initial curvature. The path of a pile is function of
the tip resistance, the shaft friction and the normal pressure. The forces acting on the pile are shown in Figure 1.
(2)
with the boundary conditions as follows
(3)
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Tisseau, Jaeck and Cathie. Controlling Conductor Deviation with Inclined Driving Shoe
points satisfy equation 2. Replacing the dierential derivatives with their nite dierence equivalents, equation 28
from Poskitts work is obtained.
The top and the toe of the pile (j = 0 and j = r) are governed
by the boundary conditions (equation 3). Written in nite
dierences, it becomes equation 4.
(4)
Assuming that -1 = 1, a system of r equations with r unknowns (1 to r) is obtained.
Figure 1: Pile forces (a) perfectly straight pile and (b) pile
with initial curvature
(5)
The Newton-Raphson method can be used to solve the
problem and determine = (1, ... , r). Let A(n) be the
matrix formed with the gradient vectors of the system of
equations (partial derivation relative to [1, ... , r]). A(n) is
the Jacobean matrix of the system (taking into account the
second and higher products and the pj gradients). The iteration routine of Newton-Raphson is given in equation 6.
(6)
where (n + 1) and (n) indicate the (n + 1)th and nth iterates,
respectively, and e(n) is the residual vector obtained by substituting (n) into the equations.
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Proceedings of the 6th International Oshore Site Investigation and Geotechnics Conference:
Confronting New Challenges and Sharing Knowledge, 1113 September 2007, London, UK
tip resistance and the shaft resistance, as shown in Figure
4b. The normal pressure induces a bending moment at the
elbow point in the direction of the shoe. The tip resistance
and the shaft resistance induce an upward axial force and a
radial force which causes bending in the opposite direction
to the normal force. Once these forces and the soil forces
acting on the body of the pile are determined, the path of
the pile can be solved using the forces as boundary conditions in the original method, as shown in Figure 4c.
The forces acting on the pile can be written as in equation 7
(using the same notations as for equation 1).
(7)
The subscript elb applies to the elbow between straight pile
section and bent shoe. Lshoe is the length of the bent shoe.
The incremental solution is then implemented in a Visual
Basic for Application (VBA) spreadsheet.
The unit end bearing is taken as nine times the cohesion and
the pile is supposed to be plugged. To remain conservative
(large lateral soil resistance induces large pile deviation), a
high subgrade modulus is selected with the ultimate value
reached for a displacement yu of 550D (50 is the strain at
one-half the maximum deviator stress on laboratory undrained compression tests of undisturbed soil samples). For
comparison, Matlock4 suggests a larger value yu of 2050D.
The sensitivity of the results to the pile increment length are
rst analysed to determine the optimum length, for which
accurate results are calculated but within a reasonable calculation time. The calculated pile deviation for the base case
(bent shoe 1.5m long and 0.75 inclined) are presented in
Table 1 for three pile increment values. The results show
that an increment length of 1.6m is small enough to obtain
acceptable solutions.
The sensitivity of the pile deviation to the following parameters has then been analysed:
Lateral subgrade modulus
Axial tip resistance Pr
Length of bent shoe Lshoe
Inclination of bent shoe elb.
3.3.1 Eect of soil resistance (lateral subgrade modulus
and axial tip resistance)
The eects of the subgrade modulus and the axial tip resistance on the deviation of the pile are presented in Tables 2
and 3, respectively. The eect of both parameters is also
illustrated on Figure 6.
Table 1: Eect of increment length: 26in OD x 1.25in WT pile,
80m penetration (bent shoe 1.5m long and 0.75 inclined)
Increment
Length (m)
Segment
Number
Pile Tip
Angle of
Deviation (m) Deviation ()
2.5
32
1.07
0.77
1.6
50
1.15
0.83
1.0
80
1.17
0.84
Kref/2
0.56
0.40
Kref
1.15
0.83
2*Kref
2.22
1.59
Pr,ref/2
1.18
0.84
Pr,ref
1.15
0.83
2* Pr,ref
1.11
0.79
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Tisseau, Jaeck and Cathie. Controlling Conductor Deviation with Inclined Driving Shoe
Figure 6: Eect of the subgrade modulus and the axial tip resistance on pile deviation
0.25
0.38
0.28
0.50
0.77
0.55
0.75
1.15
0.83
1.00
1.54
1.10
1.50
2.21
1.58
2.00
2.47
1.77
3.00
2.62
1.88
4.00
2.62
1.88
5.00
2.59
1.86
10.00
2.31
1.66
0.5
0.01
0.01
1.5
1.15
0.83
9.17
6.61
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Proceedings of the 6th International Oshore Site Investigation and Geotechnics Conference:
Confronting New Challenges and Sharing Knowledge, 1113 September 2007, London, UK
For small inclination values, the force generated by the normal soil pressure on the shoe increases more quickly than the
radial force applied at the elbow, Felb, which is inuenced by
the axial tip resistance and the shaft friction on the shoe.
The two values are in reasonable agreement with a dierence of less than 3m of deviation and of 2.8 in terms of
angle of deviation. The computed shape of the deviated pile
is plotted in Figure 8.
6. Notation
fs
Depth
(m)
Description
0.007.10
7.1015.60
x, y
15.6030.50
30.5040.00
Loose sand
shear force
40.0060.50
60.5069.70
69.7078.00
Lshoe
bending moment
R0
su
shear strength
elb
Pile Tip
Angle of
Deviation (m) Deviation ()
Measured
Onsite
~74.1
~11.7
Computed
Solution
74.5
14.5
9.0
11.8
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Tisseau, Jaeck and Cathie. Controlling Conductor Deviation with Inclined Driving Shoe
References
1. Poskitt TJ. (1996). The deection of piles during driving.
Gotechnique 46(2), 235243.
2. American Petroleum Institute (API). (2000). Recommended practice for planning, designing and constructing xed oshore platforms,
21st edition (RP2A). Washington, DC: API.
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