Predicting scour and scour-induced settlement of subsea infrastructure

本项目旨在对移动的海床上海底基础设施的冲刷和海底沉降的可能性和程度进行更好的预测和了解。预计这将使冲刷和沉降能够在工程稳定性和适用性设计中直接考虑，推翻目前的做法，这种做法基于使用冲刷保护和昂贵的维护和补救措施而忽略了这两种影响。预计将通过物理模型试验、数值模拟和现场数据分析来进行准确的预测。预测应提高水下可靠性，并导致在某些情况下遗漏冲刷保护，提高我国海上石油和天然气工业的国际竞争力。

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.