Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599

www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Technical note
Finite element analysis of suction penetration
seepage field of bucket foundation platform
with application to offshore oilfield
development
Shihua Zhang a, Quanan Zheng b,
, Xinan Liu c
a
Drilling Technology Research Institute of Shengli Oilfield, Dongying, Shandong 257017, China
b
Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Received 23 July 2003; accepted 12 October 2003

Abstract

The seepage field generated by suction penetration of a bucket foundation into sea floor is
numerically simulated with a finite element method. The water head and its gradient on both
sides of the bucket wall in the seepage field are computed and the results are applied to the
calculation of penetration resistance versus penetration depth. Also, allowable suction pres-
sures with various penetration depths are provided for platform installation. The engineering
parameters given in this paper were adopted in the design of the first platform (CB20B) with
suction-penetrated buckets as foundations in China. This platform has successfully been
launched into operation for the offshore oilfield development at the Yellow River Submersed
Delta.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Finite element method; Bucket foundation; Seepage field

1. Introduction

Bucket foundation technology has been widely used in the construction of off-
shore oil and gas platforms since early 1990s (Baerheim, 1995; Erbich et al., 1995;
Rusaas, 1995; Tjelta, 1995a,b). During the platform installation, in order to press a

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-301-405-8253; fax: +1-301-314-9482.
E-mail address: quanan@atmos.umd.edu (Q. Zheng).

0029-8018/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2004.03.001
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bucket foundation to easily penetrate into the sea floor sediment layers, water
pumps are used to produce a negative pressure inside the bucket. As a result, a
relatively high pressure outside the bucket forces interstitial water in the surround-
ing sediment to flow into the bucket. This water flow motion forms a seepage field
in sea floor sediments outside and inside the bucket. Field operation shows that
this seepage field may have cause certain advantageous and disadvantageous effects
on suction penetration of bucket foundation. For instance, the penetration resist-
ance with seepage can be reduced to as large as half of that without seepage. On
the other hand, the increase in effective stress between the surrounding sediment
and the bucket wall may hinder the penetration. Therefore, it is important to ana-
lyze the dynamics of seepage field during the penetration process for the purpose of
a successful erection of bucket foundation platform.
In this study, a finite element method is used to simulate the dynamics of the
seepage field generated by the penetration of bucket foundation into the sea floor
under a variety of environmental and working conditions. In particular, hetero-
geneous sediment layers are taken into account. The finite element model used in
this paper was tested with a physical model in laboratory. The results of numerical
simulation were applied to investigate all penetration conditions for the field oper-
ation of CB20B platform and to guide the installation of its bucket foundation in
the sea. The erection of CB20B platform indicates that the finite element analysis
may serve as a theoretical basis providing engineering and design parameters for
platforms with bucket foundations in offshore oil and gas development.

2. Finite element model in seepage field

According to Darcy’s law (Greenkorn, 1983; Cedergren, 1997), the steady-state

seepage velocity (~v) in the field of sea floor sediments may be represented as
follows:
 
@h ~ @h~ @h ~
~v ¼  kx i þ ky j þ kz k ; ð1Þ
@x @y @z
where x, y, and z constitute a Cartesian coordinate system with z upward positive,
kx, ky, and kz are, respectively, the permeability coefficients along x, y, and z coor-
dinates, h is the water head, and ð@h=@x; @h=@y; @h=@zÞ are water head gradients.
In terms of the conservation of mass, i.e. r  *v ¼ 0, the governing equation for the
seepage field derived from Eq. (1) can be written as
     
@ @h @ @h @ @h
kx þ ky þ kz ¼ 0: ð2Þ
@x @x @y @y @z @z
Boundary conditions for this problem are given as follows: on boundary of the
seafloor surface, the general water head is given by
h ¼ h
; ð3Þ
where h
is a known water head. On the boundaries of non-permeable borders
 S. Zhang et al. / Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599 1593

including the waterproof layer in the sea floor sediments and the wall of the
bucket, the seepage velocity satisfies
v ~
~ n ¼ 0; ð4Þ
where ~ n is the normal unit vector of the boundary surface. Also, on the vertical
outside boundary of sediment border far away from the bucket, the seepage velo-
city is given as
v ¼ 0:
~ ð5Þ
In this paper, the above equations (1) and (2) with their boundary conditions
(3)–(5) are solved by using a finite element method (the ANSYS software is used).
The bucket body in our numerical simulation is a round cylinder with a very thin
wall. The thickness of the wall is only of order of one element. The computation
domain of sediments surrounding the bucket is 15–20 times of the bucket diameter.
The penetration is vertically downward. Computation elements are 3D axially sym-
metrical vertically from the sea floor surface to the waterproof layer as shown in
Figs. 1 and 2.
The example results of numerical simulation are shown in the following four fig-
ures. Fig. 3 shows the water head on both sides of the bucket wall. Fig. 4 shows
the seepage gradient on both sides of the bucket wall. Fig. 5 shows the seepage
gradient near the lower end of the bucket wall, and Fig. 6 shows the seepage gradi-
ent vector field near the lower end of the bucket wall. As can be seen from Fig. 5,
the seepage gradient changes sharply.

3. Laboratory model testing

In order to test the finite element model proposed in this paper, a physical model
experiment was carried out in the Shengli Offshore Engineering Simulation Lab-
oratory. The dimensions of the physical model are 5-m2 by 2-m depth. The sea
floor base with a thickness of 1.6 m is made of the silt that was taken from the

Fig. 1. Calculation grids of the finite element model used in this study.
1594 S. Zhang et al. / Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599

Fig. 2. Enlarged sub-domain near the bucket wall of Fig. 1. The narrow-long, vertical bar represents the
bucket wall. The bucket inside is on the right.

Fig. 3. Water head on both sides of the bucket wall generated by the finite element model.
 S. Zhang et al. / Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599 1595

Fig. 4. Water head gradient on both sides of the bucket wall generated by the finite element model.

Fig. 5. A close view of water head gradient around the lower end of the bucket wall.
1596 S. Zhang et al. / Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599

Fig. 6. Water head gradient vector field around the lower end of the bucket wall.

beach nearby the Yellow River Delta. The permeability coefficient of the silt is
1:56 105 cm s1 . The water depth in the physical model is 0.14 m. The bucket is
made of 5-mm-thick steel sheet. The diameter of the bucket is 600 mm.
In the laboratory model test, a series of piezometers were inserted at different
depths in sea floor base and at different locations relative to the center of the
bucket to measure water heads. Comparison of water head values in the seepage
field between numerical simulation and physical model experiment shows that the
maximum relative deviation between the two data sets is 24.8%, the minimum is
0.5%, and the mean is 9.5%. This result indicates that the seepage filed simulated
by the finite element model agrees well with that measured in physical model
experiments.

4. Application to CB20B platform

CB20B platform is the first production platform with bucket foundations in the
Shengli Oilfield, China. The platform is located at the Yellow River Submersed
Delta. The local water depth of the platform is 8.9 m. The platform consists of
three parts: a deck module, a jacket, and four round bucket foundations. The
buckets with the diameter of 4 m are made of 20-mm-thick steel sheet. The
designed penetration depth of the platform is 4 m.
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Table 1
Thicknesses and permeability coefficients of sea floor sediment layers at the CB20B platform
Layer Sediment Thickness of Coefficient of horizontal Coefficient of vertical
No. material layer (m) permeability (cm s1) permeability (cm s1)
1 Silt 5.2 4:28 106 2:35 106
2 Clay 3.0 2:75 107 5:60 108
3 Silt 2.5 3:05 106 5:43 107
4 Silt 16.0 3:40 108 4:30 107

A marine geological survey was performed before installation of CB20B plat-

form to provide all the material parameters of sediments in the region of CB20B
platform for the purpose of numerical analysis. The survey shows that the sea floor
sediments are composed of four layers of silts and clay with a total thickness of
26.7 m. Table 1 lists the thicknesses and permeability coefficients of all four sedi-
ment layers. Fig. 7 shows the curves of side friction resistance and end resistance
versus penetration depth obtained from core pressure test (CPT). The critical
hydraulic gradient of the first (top) layer is 18.13. If the factor of safety (FOS) for
engineering operation is set as 3.0, the allowable critical hydraulic gradient is 6.04.

Fig. 7. Curves obtained by CPT for sea floor sediments taken from the location of CB20B platform. The
symbol, fs, represents side friction resistance per unit area, qc is end resistance per unit area, and H is
the penetration depth.
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Fig. 8. Suction penetration resistance versus penetration depth. (B1) Modeled and (C) measured.

Table 2
Allowable suction pressure versus penetration depth determined by the finite element method
Penetration depth (m) 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 2.8 3.2 3.6 4.0
Allowable 51.9 87.8 117.4 144.6 170.9 196.7 222.6 248.9 276.0 305.0
suction pressure (kPa)

The finite element model was applied to simulate the seepage field surrounding
CB20B platform. The computation domain of the sediments surrounding the buck-
ets is 80 m in diameter by the depth of 26.7 m, which is the total thickness of sea
floor sediments from the first layer to the bottom layer. For a given penetration
depth, the water head and its gradient are calculated and then the penetration
resistance is determined (Johnson and DeGraff, 1988). The curves of computed and
measured penetration resistance versus the penetration depth are shown in Fig. 8.
One can see that the model results are very close to the field measurements.
The finite element model results also show that during the penetration process,
the seepage gradient at the lower end of the bucket wall increases remarkably (see
Fig. 6). In terms of the allowable critical hydraulic gradient of the first layer, we
provide the allowable suction pressures, which increase with the penetration depths
as listed in Table 2. These data were adopted to guide the installation operation for
CB20B platform, which was successfully erected at the design location and has
already been put into production.

5. Conclusion

In this study, we adopt the finite element method in the simulation of the seep-
age field generated by the suction penetration of bucket foundation into the sea
floor. Comparing with the results of laboratory experiments of physical model and
 S. Zhang et al. / Ocean Engineering 31 (2004) 1591–1599 1599

the data measured during the field installation, it may be concluded that the finite
element method is a practicable tool for simulation of the seepage field for bucket
suction penetration into the sea floor sediment layers. The key parameters com-
puted from this method, including the seepage flow field, allowable suction press-
ure and penetration resistance, can be directly applied to engineering design and
field construction.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Chinese State 863 High-Tech Development Program

and partially supported by NASA (NAG5-13636 for QZ). Authors express their
special thanks to Dongchang Sun, Songsen Xu, and Xinjie Chu for their assistance
in laboratory experiments and field data collection.

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