Managing scour and infill in offshore projects, London

Overview

Marine projects are continuously exposed to scour risks which impact the performance of foundations, pipelines and cables. The scour risk is assessed through a Scour Hazard Assessment and evaluated through the project life cycle in the Scour Management Plan.

Results from field, laboratory and numerical work are brought together to quantify the expected scour development and underpin scour mitigation or remedial works. Optimisation approaches for scour protection are continually developing and some experiences of different measures will be reviewed.

The experience and lessons learnt from a range of studies where scour has been analysed at design and operational stages of projects will be covered. Recent results from physical model testing in HR Wallingford's Fast Flow Facility for offshore and subsea structures will be presented to illustrate some key processes. Recent project examples of a suction bucket jacket foundation design and a subsea gravity structure will be covered. Other research activities will be covered including evaluation of scour in heterogeneous soils and sediment infill experiments.