Effects of Ground Movement on Oil and Gas Pipelines and Piles

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Landslides occur in both onshore and offshore environments. Similar to onshore landslides, many underwater seabed slope failures have been reported in the literature, and some of the large submarine landslides generated tsunami such as the Grand Banks landslide in offshore Newfoundland, Canada. Submarine landslides could also damage infrastructure installed in the seabed for offshore oil and gas development. Various factors could trigger onshore and offshore landslides; however, the existence of sensitive clay layers, toe erosion near the riverbank, upslope loading, formation of weakened zones and earthquake loading are the main foci of the present study. The large-scale landslides generally initiate through progressive development of failure planes along which a number of failed soil blocks displace over a large distance. Similarly, post-failure movement of the failed soil mass, known as ‘runout,’ could also have devastating effects on human life and infrastructure. Numerical modeling techniques, which can accommodate such large deformation of soil, will be developed in this research program to study onshore and offshore landslides and runout. In addition, pipelines or piles located in the landslide areas or runout zones might be damaged or destroyed due to the force transmitted to these structures by the sliding soil mass. Numerical analysis and physical modeling using a geotechnical centrifuge will be performed to understand pipeline-soil and pile-soil interaction mechanisms which could be used to improve design guidelines. Four Masters and five Doctoral candidates’ research will be supported by this grant at Memorial University of Newfoundland.