TY - GEN
T1 - Risk-based assessment of scour around subsea infrastructure
AU - Tom, Joe
AU - Draper, Scott
AU - White, David
AU - O'Neill, Michael
N1 - The authors are grateful to Dr. Y. Baba, Dr. K. Hojou and Dr. S. Shamoto for their encouragement through the present work. This work has been performed under the approval of the Photon Factory Program Advisory Committee (PF-PAC 2006G346). This work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory Research (#18651063), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Scour poses a significant risk to infrastructure placed on mobile seabeds. Seabed mobility is common on the North West Shelf of Australia, in parts of the North Sea, and also occurs in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, due to loop currents. Scour can undermine structures and, for shallow-skirted mudmat foundations, there can be significant consequences including excessive settlements, tilt and loss of bearing and sliding capacity. However, scour mitigation via engineered protection is costly, and to be avoided if possible. This paper describes a new quantitative risk-based approach for assessing the susceptibility of subsea infrastructure to scour processes. This probabilistic scour assessment accommodates measurable uncertainties in metocean and seabed conditions, using new characterization techniques. The approach allows operators and owners to better assess the optimum strategy to address scour risk, selecting from mitigation during installation or in-service monitoring, prediction and remediation. The paper describes (i) best practice approaches for assessing scour susceptibility and propagation rates with and without engineered protection, (ii) new methods for determining the applicable seabed and metocean inputs, (iii) a probabilistic framework for encompassing uncertainties, and (iv) how this approach can be applied in project applications. Our probabilistic method of assessing and presenting scour risk produces a distribution of estimates of scour depth and time rate. By capturing and quantifying the full range of uncertainties, this method facilitates decision-making by showing the range of potential outcomes and allowing the associated costs and consequences to be evaluated. This approach is superior to deterministic 'worst case' calculations, which are often used to assess scour susceptibility. In summary, this paper provides operators and owners with an improved methodology to unlock Capex and Opex savings through more accurate and informed scour assessments.
AB - Scour poses a significant risk to infrastructure placed on mobile seabeds. Seabed mobility is common on the North West Shelf of Australia, in parts of the North Sea, and also occurs in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, due to loop currents. Scour can undermine structures and, for shallow-skirted mudmat foundations, there can be significant consequences including excessive settlements, tilt and loss of bearing and sliding capacity. However, scour mitigation via engineered protection is costly, and to be avoided if possible. This paper describes a new quantitative risk-based approach for assessing the susceptibility of subsea infrastructure to scour processes. This probabilistic scour assessment accommodates measurable uncertainties in metocean and seabed conditions, using new characterization techniques. The approach allows operators and owners to better assess the optimum strategy to address scour risk, selecting from mitigation during installation or in-service monitoring, prediction and remediation. The paper describes (i) best practice approaches for assessing scour susceptibility and propagation rates with and without engineered protection, (ii) new methods for determining the applicable seabed and metocean inputs, (iii) a probabilistic framework for encompassing uncertainties, and (iv) how this approach can be applied in project applications. Our probabilistic method of assessing and presenting scour risk produces a distribution of estimates of scour depth and time rate. By capturing and quantifying the full range of uncertainties, this method facilitates decision-making by showing the range of potential outcomes and allowing the associated costs and consequences to be evaluated. This approach is superior to deterministic 'worst case' calculations, which are often used to assess scour susceptibility. In summary, this paper provides operators and owners with an improved methodology to unlock Capex and Opex savings through more accurate and informed scour assessments.
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U2 - 10.4043/27131-ms
DO - 10.4043/27131-ms
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85018549095
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual Offshore Technology Conference
SP - 2773
EP - 2792
BT - Offshore Technology Conference 2016, OTC 2016
PB - Offshore Technology Conference
T2 - Offshore Technology Conference 2016, OTC 2016
Y2 - 2 May 2016 through 5 May 2016
ER -