Investigation of the Pile Aging Effect of a Fixed Offshore Platform Located in Persian Gulf using Nonlinear Soil-Pile Interactions

The study about the jacket platforms in the past has revealed that the most of the collapse failures occur due to the lack of strength of the pile foundation. However, when the jacket platforms which have been collapsed due to extreme condition were looked into, it was found that most of them had their foundations intact. These contrasting facts can be explained with the help of the phenomenon called “aging of piles”. Aging effect of piles has been proven by experiments indicating gradual increase in pile capacity which is due to the thixotropic characteristics of clayey soils, leading to gradual improvement of soil clamping property. But due to lack of proper understanding and suitable techniques to incorporate them, these aging effects have been ignored during the pushover analysis. In this study, a simple technique of stepping up of the soil curves in order to accommodate the increase in capacity of pile foundation due to aging is utilized, and then the pushover analysis is performed using commercial software SACS. SPD19C (South Pars gas field Development, phase 19) is a new constructed jacket platform in Persian Gulf which is used as the case study in this paper. The platform is considered to be under the storm condition in 180º direction which is the worst condition. This study shows that the incorporation of pile aging effect results in the improvement the piles performance and Reserve Strength Ratio (RSR) about 10 percent. This research also has provided a deeper knowledge into the behavior of aged offshore jacket platforms.