The shear stress–shear displacement relationship and shear strength parameters of the interface between the pipe and the surrounding soil are important for designing the jacking force. One most commonly used method to measure the shear strength of the pipe–soil interface is the direct shear test. This paper presents the results of a series of direct shear tests conducted in the laboratory on the pipe–soil interfaces for different moisture contents. Simultaneously, digital image correlation is used to supplement the research of the horizontal displacement field of the interface. The results show that the increase of normal stress will makes the interface more prone to strain hardening during the shearing process, and the influence of the change of specimen moisture content on the interface strain characteristics gradually weakens. The shearing process of the specimen mainly involved shearing contraction, and slight shear dilation occurs only when the moisture content is small. We proposed a unified model for describing the shear volumetric change caused by the combined action of moisture content and normal stress. The shear displacement field presents a layered distribution, which is related to the shear displacement corresponding to the shear stress.

Under high thermal stress, buckling of submarine pipelines may occur to release the stresses accumulated in the walls of the pipelines. The likelihood that buckling occurs is largely determined by the capability of the soil to resist pipeline movements. Therefore, it is very important to determine the soil resistance in upheaval buckling when designing submarine pipelines. A series of large-scale model tests were carried out with soft clay chosen as the supporting medium in view of Bohai Sea geotechnical conditions. Pipe segments with diameters of 30, 50, and 80 mm were used. The pipes were buried in different depth-to-diameter ratios between 1 and 9. The uplift, lateral, and axial resistances were recorded during the tests. The test results have shown that the soil resistance depends on the pipe’s diameter and cover depth. According to the uplift test results, the load-displacement relationships with smaller depth of cover differ greatly from those with larger depth of cover. The results of the ...

Monopiles are popular solutions as the foundation to support offshore wind turbines (OWTs), which suffer from various amplitudes of continuous lateral cyclic wind and wave loading. The accumulation of tilt and change of the natural frequency of OWTs under cyclic loading have become crucial issues for OWT design. Hence the monopile-tower-soil system was established at the small-scale level based on similarity laws with a suit of constant-amplitude and multi-amplitude tests in dense sand. Two sets of gear-driving assembly were successfully set up to achieve the application of cyclic loading to the model OWT. The amplitude and symmetry of cyclic loading were specified as three indicative regions according to those of real wind farms. On the basis of test results, the two-way loading was found to be the most hazardous situation and the preloading condition led to a high accumulation of tilt. The change of natural frequency was controlled by the load magnitude and tended to increase during cyclic loads, while a sharp decrease was observed when sand subsidence was generated. The post-cyclic lateral capacity seemed to be a slight increase compared with the static capacity. The relevant analyses based on test results can provide practical recommendations for OWT design.

Most offshore wind-turbine foundations are monopile foundations. Monopile foundations have the advantages of simple structures and are convenient to construct. In recent years, large-diameter monopile foundations, with diameters larger than 4 m, have been used in engineering applications to increase the bearing capacity of wind turbines. Increasing the foundation pile diameter changes the bearing characteristics from those of traditional small-diameter steel-pipe piles. However, research on the bearing characteristics of large-diameter steel-pipe piles is lacking; no mature method exists to estimate the bearing capacity. On the basis of numerical simulations, the differences between the stress and deformation characteristics of the pile body and the soil around it between large-diameter and small-diameter steel-pipe piles subjected to vertical loads and horizontal loads in sand are investigated in this study. A method to calculate the vertical bearing capacity, considering the soil-arching effect...