Consolidation of unsaturated seabed around an inserted pile foundation and its effects on the wave-induced momentary liquefaction

Abstract

Seabed consolidation state is one of important factors for evaluating the foundation stability of the marine structures. Most previous studies focused on the seabed consolidation around breakwaters standing on the seabed surface. In this study, a numerical model, based on Biot’s poro-elasticity theory, is developed to investigate the unsaturated seabed consolidation around a nearshore pile foundation, in which the pile inserted depth leads to a different stress distribution. Seabed instabilities of shear failure by the pile self-weight and the potential liquefaction under the dynamic wave loading are also examined. Results indicate that (1) the presence of the inserted pile foundation increases the effective stresses below the foundation, while increases and decreases the effective stresses around the pile foundation for small (de/R<=3.3) and large (de/R>3.3) inserted depths, respectively, after seabed consolidation, (2) the aforementioned effects are relatively more significant for small inserted depth, large external loading, and small Young’s modulus, (3) the shear failure mainly occurs around the inserted pile foundation, rather than below the foundation as previously found for the located marine structures, and (4) wave-induced momentary liquefaction near the inserted pile foundation significantly increases with the increase of inserted depth, due to the change of seabed consolidation state.