Installation of open-ended piles: A numerical investigation into the effects on the state of silica sand

Abstract

Up to this day, there are great uncertainties in the design procedures of monopiles, especially concerning the soil state condition and penetration response during their installation. A numerical model, based on the Coupled Eulerian method and using the hypoplastic law with intergranular strain, is proposed and validated in this paper, after which a series of open-ended pile installation tests have been carried out numerically, to investigate the influence of the jacked installation on the initial conditions for three types of silica sand. A range of soil densities and pile diameters is considered in this analysis. A full investigation of the installation forces, stress level, changes in volume-stress level and voids ratio is conducted. The numerical solution provided a correlation between the penetration resistance and the granulometric properties of the studied sands. Subsequently, the radial stresses in the surrounding soil mass are correlated with the type of sand and its relative density. The stress-volume state of a set of points in the soil domain during installation is presented and discussed from the critical state framework, revealing the contribution of the in-situ state in the pile installation. Finally, the lateral earth pressure resulting after installation is presented.

Keywords

• Pile installation
• Sands
• Offshore engineering
• Numerical methods
• CEL
• Hypoplasticity