• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.110-121
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• 2001

The interest in suction piles by the oil industry was risen in the middle of 1980's. Recently, suction piles have been applied increasingly in offshore engineering due to its low cost, simplicity, efficiency, and reliability. Suction piles have normally been used as anchors of floating structures and foundations of marine structures in deep-water locations. Suction piles have several technical advantages over conventional piles and anchors; fast and easy installation at any depth of water, extremely large resistance due to its huge size, and easy retrieval by applying a positive suction pressure inside the pile, etc. Daewoo E&C Co., Ltd. has conducted a series of field suction pile installation and loading tests inside the Okpo harbor located in Geojedo and the Onsan harbor in Ulsan, Korea, during the summer of 2001, which may provide additional validation of the analytical solutions previously developed by the US Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center. This is a brief description of the general mechanisms of suction pile installation and loading capacity based on the study conducted by the US Navy and Daewoo E&C Co., Ltd.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.825-839
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• 2010

The global and domestic market for offshore wind farm is expected to grow fast, and the design and installation of substructure and foundation is getting more important. As for the offshore wind farms located in the shallow(depth < 20m) water, the construction and installation of the substructure and foundation makes up about 1/4 ~1/3 of the offshore wind farm construction cost, and the portion is expected to increase because the turbine capacity is increasing from 2 ~ 3MW to 5MW or larger and the water depth of wind farms is also increasing over 30m. As a foundation for offshore wind turbine, the suction caisson foundation is being considered to be a highly competitive alternative to the conventional monopile or gravity based structure, because it has features suitable for the offshore construction such as quick installation, no heavy equipment for penetration and no hammering noise for driving. In order to study the installation behaviour of the suction caisson, laboratory tests were performed with sand. The pore water pressure and displacement were measured to analyze the suction pressure during penetration, the penetration speed and the amount of heaving.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.75-83
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• 2014

Suction bucket foundation is installed with the differential pressure created by pumping water out of bucket. Bucket foundation has usually been utilized in mooring anchor for offshore platform or floating oil and gas production facilities in the open sea. After suction bucket foundation successfully was applied as the foundation for offshore wind turbines in Europe, it recently attracts much attention in Korea, too. To estimate the penetration resistance of the suction bucket foundation is one of the important matters that should be considered during its installation. This study carried out a series of model tests to investigate the penetration resistance of suction bucket foundation. And the mobilized soil strength factor was reviewed through comparing the experimental results by two installation ways (e.g., push-in-load and suction) and the results calculated by the conventional equation.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2022

This paper presents the measuring process of dynamic properties of offshore wind power foundation and provides consideration of each step. This Guideline enables to maintain consistent measuring procedure and therefore increase the reliability of test results. Small scaled suction bucket foundation was fabricated to represent the commercial support structure installation mechanism and two cases(free-free, free-fixed) of dynamic tests were performed at workshop. From the tests, the importance of dynamic properties of connection part between suction bucket and tower was figured out. More over, types and configuration of measuring devices are recommended which can help find the natural frequency of wind turbine foundation correctly. In field test, it was found that the natural frequency of suction bucket foundation was increased linearly with the penetration depth due to the confining effect of ambient soil. Meanwhile, it was not easy to get an enough excitation force with normal impact hammer because the N.F of suction bucket model was in the lower range of 0 Hz ~ 5 Hz. Therefore, new excitation method which has enough force and can excite lower frequency range was devised. This study will help develop safety check procedure of suction bucket foundation in field at each installation stage using the N.F measurement.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.10
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• pp.5-19
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• 2020

With increasing demand for offshore structures, the demand for temporary structures to help the offshore construction work has increased. A cofferdam is a temporary barrier to stop the inflow of water in the construction site and allows working in the dry condition when the construction is done within the water. However, it is a major cause of construction delays and increased costs because additional works are required to block the water inflow. Recently, in order to overcome the limitations of the conventional cofferdam methods and to increase economic efficiency, a large-diameter steel cofferdam method has been proposed which can be installed quickly in the seabed by using the suction pressure. In this circular steel cofferdam method, the top side of the cofferdam including the top-lid is always exposed above the sea level in order to use it as a water barrier, unlike the conventional suction bucket foundation. After installation, the top-lid of the cofferdam is removed and the water filled inside the cofferdam is discharged to make the interior dry condition. In this study, the circular steel cofferdam with a 5 m inner diameter was fabricated and the installation tests were conducted at the Saemaguem test site. During the experiment, variation of suction pressure, leakage between connections, structure deformation, and inclination of the steel cofferdam were measured and post-analyzed. This study verified the new circular steel cofferdam method and confirmed that the suction installation method can be successfully used for various purposes on offshore structures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.494-503
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• 2010

This paper reviews research trend in suction bucket foundation. Wind energy farm has been considered as an efficient alternative to fuel energy as world markets attempt to discover renewable resources. Recently, Korean government initiated the research projects investigating installation method of offshore wind energy foundation and design guideline as well as verifying feasibility of offshore wind farm. In fact, the installation of monopile and gravity type foundation has been sucessfully carried out in European and other advanced countries, and design guideline of those foundations are well established; however, various types of foundation would be necessary in the near future as offshore wind farm demands abundant wind resources in deep sea. In this paper, bucket foundation is spot lighted as a powerful and economic alternative applicable to deep sea condition.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.35-43
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• 2020

Currently, cofferdams of circular cross section are widely applied as temporary facilities for the installation of bridge foundations in river/sea bridge construction in Korea. Existing caisson, sheet pile, and cell type cofferdam are widely used, but these methods take a lot of time and cost for installation and dismantling. In the case of the existing sheet pile construction method, attention is needed to secure internal and external stability because of the damage to the sheet pile due to ground penetration and difficulty in connecting element members. In this study, penetration design of circular steel pipes using suction pressure was performed on the soft ground of the west coast, and it was confirmed that penetration construction using suction pressure was possible through field tests. It was confirmed that applying the ground analysis results using the cone penetration test (CPT) to the design rather than the standard penetration test (N value) results more similar to the field test results. In addition, it was confirmed that local failure of the inside of the cofferdam was induced when a suction pressure higher than the upper limit suction pressure was applied in the silty sand.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.517-520
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• 2005

The embedded suction anchor(ESA) is and anchor that is driven by a suction pile. The cross-sectional shape of the ESA anchor is circle. Its diameter is the same as that of the suction pile that is used to drive it into the seafloor. For the installation, the anchor is attached to the tip of the suction pile and then driven as a unit with the pile by and applied suction pressure. Once the ESA anchor reaches the desired depth, the pile is retrieved by applying a positive pressure. Finally, only the ESA anchor remains in the soil layer. This paper presents the results of centrifuge model tests to investigate ESA pullout capacity. The main parameters that have effects on the pullout capacity of ESA may include g-level, embedded depth, direction of loading, and loading point. The results of tests show that the pullout loading capacities increase as the loading point shift toward the tip of the anchors for a given loading direction. They also indicate that the loading point associated with the maximum pullout loading capacity is located at approximately 67 percent of the anchor length from the top for the horizontal load.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.103-116
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• 2014

This paper presents the results of a numerical investigation on the load carrying capacity and consolidation behavior of suction piles. Three dimensional numerical models which reflect realistic ground conditions and installation procedures including the ground-suction pile interface were adopted to conduct a parametric study on variables such as the length-diameter ratio and the loading configurations, i.e, vertical, horizontal, and combined loads. The results indicated that the load carrying capacity of a suction pile can only be realistically obtained when the interface behavior between the suction pile and the ground is correctly modeled. Also carried out was the stress-pore pressure coupled analysis to investigate the consolidation behavior of the suction pile after the application of a vertical loading. Based on the results, failure envelops and associated equations were developed, which can be used to estimate load carrying capacity of suction piles installed in similar conditions considered in this study. The results of consolidation analysis based on the stress-pore pressure coupled analysis indicate that no significant excess pore pressure and associated consolidation settlement occur for the loading configuration considered in part due to the load transfer mechanism of the suction pile.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.267-273
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• 2020

Suction anchors are used for floating structures because they have advantages in installation and stability. Recently, the demand for floating structures requiring low allowable displacement has increased. Thus, it is strongly suggested that the displacement of the suction anchor be evaluated. However, conventional studies regarding suction anchors have concentrated on the capacity of the anchor, and research on the displacement of the anchor is limited. In particular, rotation is the primary behavior of a suction anchor subjected to an inclined load, and related information has been insufficient. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to investigate the rotation behavior of a suction anchor via centrifuge model tests. The experimental parameters are the inclination of the pull-out load, anchor dimensions, and aspect ratio. The rotation values of suction anchors were compared using a series of load-rotation curves. The results show that the inclination of the load has a dominant influence on the rotation behavior of the suction anchor.