In this lesson a suction pile in an off-shore foundation will be considered. A suction pile is a hollow steel pile with a large diameter and a closed top, which is installed in the seabed by pumping water from the inside. The resulting pressure difference between the outside and the inside is the driving force behind this installation.In this exercise, the length of the suction pile is 10 m and the diameter is 4.5 m. An anchor line is attached on the side of the pile, 7 m from the top. To avoid local failure of the pile, the thickness of the tube where the anchor line acts on the pile is increased. The soil consists of silty sand. To model undrained behaviour, an undrained stress analysis with undrained strength parameters will be performed.
This exercise will investigate the displacement of the suction pile under working load. Four different angles of the working load will be considered. The installation process itself will not be modelled.
The attached *.p3dlog file contains all the commands to generate the model. With a Bentley Geotechnical SELECT Entitlement [GSE] licence, you can use the commands runner to open the *.p3dlog file and to execute all commands in one go, see also this instruction.
PLAXIS 3D Tutorial 02: Excavation in sand [Tutorials]
PLAXIS 3D Tutorial 04: Stability of a diphragm wall excavation [Tutorials]