Predicting scour and scour-induced settlement of subsea infrastructure

该项目旨在改进对海底基础设施在移动海床上冲刷和冲刷引起的沉降的潜力和程度的预测和理解。这有望使冲刷和沉降在工程稳定性和适用性设计中得到直接考虑，从而推翻目前忽视使用冲刷保护和昂贵的维护和补救措施这两种影响的做法。预计将通过物理模型试验、数值模拟和实地数据分析来作出准确的预测。预测可以提高海底的可靠性，避免在某些情况下遗漏冲刷保护措施，从而提高海上油气行业的国际竞争力。

This project aims to develop improved predictions and understanding of the potential and extent of scour and scour-induced settlement of subsea infrastructure on mobile seabeds. This is expected to enable scour and settlement to be accounted for directly in engineering stability and serviceability design, overturning current practice which ignores both effects on the basis of using scour protection and costly maintenance and remediation. Development of accurate predictions is expected to be achieved through physical model testing, numerical modelling and analysis of field data. Predictions should improve subsea reliability and lead to omission of scour protection in some situations, increasing international competitiveness of our offshore oil and gas industry.