Evaluating clay stiffness effects on offshore pile running with the Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian Method

Driven pipe piles are used extensively in coastal and offshore projects. Traditionally piles with diameters of 2–3 m were common in the offshore wind industry, however the diameter of monopiles to support a 10 MW wind turbine is more commonly 10 m. Offshore wind projects are being developed at sites with very low seabed strengths and pipe pile weights are increasing significantly. Self-weight penetration occurs when the pile is first placed on the seabed. A combination of low strength seabed conditions and increased pile self-weight leads to the risk of pile run (uncontrolled self-weight penetration) during installation at some sites. Predicting pile run risk, run velocities and penetration depths is challenging due to inherent rate effects and the large strains involved. While rapid penetration processes can be considered using both analytic methods and Large Deformation Finite Element simulations, the role of soil rigidity is seldom taken into account, despite known implications from static pile assessments. This study uses large deformation simulation with the Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian method to simulate the pile running process for five well-studied fine-grained soils with varying elastic stiffnesses. Results are compared with analytic methods, highlighting the limitations of current predictive techniques in terms of both the end tip and shaft resistance. As a corollary, a linear trend for the final penetration depth with respect to the logarithm of the soil rigidity index is incorporated in an existing analytic code based on results obtained from large deformation simulations.